


Allergic To Water

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Series: Lost On You [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Boys In Love, British Comedy, Business, Character Study, Cheating, Comedy, Consensual Infidelity, Dark Comedy, Declarations Of Love, Drama, Drama & Romance, Emotional Infidelity, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Family Issues, Family Secrets, Female Characters, Friendship/Love, Gay Sex, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Infidelity, Long-Term Relationship(s), Love, Love Confessions, Love Triangles, Love at First Sight, M/M, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Past Infidelity, Romance, Romantic Comedy, Sex, True Love, Unrequited Love, allergic to water, aquagenic urticaria, male characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-01-30 08:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 41,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21425266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: Between Hong Jisoo - a young man in his early twenties with a dangerous and debilitating allergy to water that people politely refer to as "a condition" - becomes romantically involved and seemingly set for long-term with Jeon Wonwoo, who is the heir to a multi-million pound hotel, restaurant, and four hundred acres of land in the Gyeryongsan mountain region, everything seems sweet until Wonwoo's Father dies in a freak accident, and, from there, all hell let's loose between two families."Allergic To Water" is a Comedy-Drama about food, love, extensive property portfolios and infidelity in rural South Korea.
Relationships: Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Jeon Wonwoo, Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Kim Mingyu, Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan, Jeon Wonwoo/Yoon Jeonghan, Lee Jihoon | Woozi/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Lost On You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1550116
Kudos: 9





	1. First Partner

**Author's Note:**

> By the way, I will warn you - this work is absolutely bloody massive. Horrific amount of word count, twenty chapters between the work split into four parts - absolutely massive.  
In this work as well, we don't just see Wonwoo's disastrous family complications, but also the life of Lee Jihoon, whose Father is the cord on bleu to Wonwoo's Mother, who for the purpose of the work I have named Chae-Seon, a successful entrepreneur and chef of the Pentrose.  
In the work, also, I refer to Wonwoo and Jihoon's Fathers by their last-names - Lee and Jeon.

"And this is my partner, Joshua," Jeon Wonwoo pointed down over the balcony to his partner, in a black t-shirt and black jeans and black Doc Martens underneath a huge black umbrella, cautiously holding his hand up to the sky. Joshua had asked Wonwoo if he minded if he brought his best friend, Yoon Jeonghan, along, and Wonwoo hadn't minded. It was the eighteenth birthday celebrations of Wonwoo's cousin, Kwak Elizabeth and her twin sister, Kwak Victoria. His Father and his younger sister had united and gone all out - no expense spared - for the girls. Everyone important and rich enough in the two surrounding villages of their Hotel and Vineyard property were attending. Elizabeth and Victorian were treated just like the Queens they were named after; they had invited all of their friends, and their boyfriends, plus their favourite Art and Music teachers. Wonwoo knew their was a family there who Victoria and Elizabeth knew who had tried to book a table at their restaurant, but had been put on the month-long reservation list. His families business was a sucsess, but Wonwoo had always thought of it as there's; his Mother's and his Father's. Jisoo had no idea who any of the people were at the party, and his Korean was just about perfect, but everyone else was like a shark; they could sense out the new fish in the depths of their ocean. Jeonghan stood beside Jisoo with a glass of wine, talking. "He has what people politely call "a condition"." Wonwoo continued to his friend, Li Jihoon. "_Aquagenic Urticaria_. Allergy to water."

  
"You're kidding me." Jihoon swore softly, taking a closer look at the young man with the black umbrella. From the courtyard that led off the Hotel-Restaurants dining hall and ball-room, was a balcony that overlooked the back side of the east wing of the Pentrose, and the extended gardens two storeys below - the land purposely cut away and sloped, with a bluestone retaining wall covered in ivy moon and wisteria - the whole party was displayed there before them. A local band played live music in English and Korean, and Wonwoo bet the lead singer thought he might get laid by one of the birthday girls. _Not going to happen with their Father around_, Wonwoo mused to himself. _Kwak Taehyung. Protective of his daughters. Vicious man_

  
"One cold shower once a week, Jisoo gets half his calories from antihistamines, and because of that you can see he's a bit underweight. Only fifty other people on Earth have it." Wonwoo explained. "When he comes into contact with water it burns him, no matter how hot or cold the water is; it's excruciating for Jisoo. His skin goes pale, and then it breaks out in dark red blotches like actual burns crossed, say, with eczema that weep and are irritating. Depending how long he's in contact with the water, it develops into an anaphylactic shock which can make him have a heart-attack or have a seizure so bad he goes unconscious and risks suffering brain damage."  
Jihoon laughed softly, but it wasn't of humor or happiness. "That's why he's got the umbrella?"

  
"Even a few drops create an effect." Wonwoo remarked. "Always has precaution. I hope the business-men haven't started making comments, or the boy-band has tried to ask out the girls. Victoria's a bit more vicious with a cake decorating knife than Elizabeth is."

  
Jihoon chuckled. "And the other one with the blonde hair?" Jihoon said of Jeonghan, the second stranger in a sea of familiar faces and company.

  
"His best friend, Jeonghan. Jisoo knew that it would be like this; a party where he knows no one and I have to talk to everyone -"

  
"With me." Jihoon smiled for a few moments. Jihoon was the son of Wonwoo's Mother's right-hand-man in the kitchen of the Hotel and Vineyards restaurant. "God, this wine tastes like toilet cleaner. What is it supposed to be?" He gave a revolted expression to Wonwoo, holding up the wine-glass.

  
"_Granita di Limone_." Wonwoo supplied. "It's supposed to clean the palate."

  
"Of what? Two canopes?" Jihoon said. "It's revolting; tastes like toilet cleaner!" 

  
Wonwoo laughed into his fist. "That bad?"

  
"Why, what are you drinking?" Jihoon asked, swapping his glass with Wonwoo, and taking a gulp of his.

  
"_Granita di Limone_." Wonwoo smirked as Jihoon's eyes looked like they were watering as he swallowed the liquid uncontently. 

  
"This place must be about twenty million worth of real estate. All the gardens, and the greenhouses and the vegetables patch. Did you see the Acorn and the Oak trees coming through the reception area? It's incredible." Jeonghan said Joshua, behaving himself in front of around a hundred finely-dress middle-aged, expensive late-adolescents and twenty-somethings, along with much older men in their sixties and seventies and even one who looked like he was an octogenarian in tailored suits.

  
"Lots of things were very cheap to build in 1978." Joshua said. "Including English-brand Georgian-style country-manor-cum-estate. Land was a cheap thing especially back in 1988, depending on how many acres you wanted."

  
"Four hundred acres in anyone's book is a lot." Jeonghan said; Joshua tipped his umbrella strategically to hide them from view as several extremely good-looking young women and men that could only be their Father's smiled at them and cast a formidable look in their direction.

  
"Wonwoo's family are self-made women and men. Old money isn't everything nowadays; new money now will be old money one day. And one day also the vines, the gardens, the vegetables plantations, the hotel, the greenhouses, the cottages, and the sixteen acre share of the lake and rice paddy fields will be old property." Joshua explained.

  
"Where do you get these rich men from?" Jeonghan shook his head, letting it all sink in. "Amazing that you're here."

  
"What does that mean?" Joshua asked.

  
"Straight-with-an-interest-on-the-side, bisexual, pansexual, gay - whatever you are. South Korea isn't America or England, Australia, Canada or New Zealand. Does his family know you're here, and the "capacity" you're here in?" Jeonghan asked drily.

  
"Not that it's any of your business but straight-with-an-interest-on-the-side?" Joshua replied, inclining his head to Jeonghan. "Really? You're more crass than Bo Hyuk - Wonu's little brother."

  
"Two things." The blonde-haired individual held up his fingers. "One, I know that Wonwoo's family definitely don't know about you, and, Two, straight-with-an-interest-on-the-side is the best one I can come up with if the other three aren't valid options."

  
"At least I've got black hair." Joshua flicked an eyebrow up, tugging at Jeonghan's fringe with a wry smile. "You should get upstairs. Talk to Wonwoo."  
"Yeah?" Jeonghan half-smiled.

  
"Yeah." Joshua nodded. "You think he's a rich man and I'm his sex toy, don't you?" Joshua tilted his head to the side, twirling the umbrella hand around in his fingers. "I'll let him get to know me too much, and then he'll flip me with one hand and I'll be a wreck and try to kill myself by having a bath because I'm so broken-hearted by the heir of all land and wine and delicious food?"

  
Jeonghan pursed his lips. "Touche." He commented. "But, yeah, pretty much."

**\---------------------------------------------------- **

****

Joshua stood beside Jeonghan in the courtyard as the birthday girls blew out their candles, and with a hand each on the cake-cutting knife, their parents on each side of them, with Wonwoo's parents standing to the right side, looking happy and extremely proud, the first slice of the three-tier raspberry-white chocolate cake was cut. Joshua's eyes connected with Wonwoo's for several long moments, he standing on the left side with a very short, facially thick-boned man. A cheer and a round of applause went up through the air, lasting for quite a while as Victoria picked up a handkerchief from Wonwoo's Father to wipe Elizabeth's eyes as she got a bit teary.

  
"Oh, now that's cute." Jeonghan whispered in Joshua's ear, his hand on Joshua's back as Victoria and Elizabeth got spoons and sampled from the same slice, smiling happily at one another. "Which one of them is single?"

  
"Wonwoo said they're both unattached and they're both virgins." Joshua laughed quietly to himself, his mouth falling open at the look of euphoria and challenge that came over Jeonghan's face. "So you've got a pick if Victoria or Elizabeth decides you're worthy. If one doesn't agree, the other wouldn't go for you, I think." Joshua broke off, pressing his hand to his mouth as he words seemed to excite Jeonghan further.

  
"Right, I'm definitely not coming home tonight." Jeonghan said, giving Joshua a kick, ridiculous kiss on his cheek before beginning to make his way over to the birthday girls. Joshua caught his elbow and pulled him back.

  
"I've got similar plans." Joshua told him. Jeonghan scoffed a laugh, raising an eyebrow.

  
"Seriously? Getting into the heir's bed in the heir's hotel under the heir's parent's noses when they are a bit..." Jeonghan flicked both of his eyebrows up. 

  
"You're the campest fucking heterosexual in history." Joshua sighed. "Have you got condoms?"

  
Jeonghan stared at him. "Sorry - what?"

  
"You know, the plastic things you put over your penis so when you ejaculate the girls don't get pregnant." Joshua said in a lowered tone. Jeonghan stuck his tongue in his cheek. "Here's one." Joshua pulled a packet out of his jeans pocket. "I don't know if it'll fit you or not, Wonwoo's huge."

  
"That is the most offensive thing anyone has ever said to me." Jeonghan quickly put it in his pocket, before jabbing his finger in Joshua's face. "He's your umbrella. Hope you get rained on, or the wind changes direction." Jeonghan and Joshua grinned. They weren't actually angry.

  
Everything stopped in it's pace as a blood-curdling scream from a woman went through the air. 

  
"You _bastard_!"  
"Fuck, that's my Mum." Jihoon quickly put down his can of beer - having found one via the gardener, Dido - and broke into a run around the side of the east and then south wings of the Pentrose, out onto the entrance driveway and courtyard where his Mother was in the process of smashing in the right headlight on his Father's Mercedes Benz with a golf club.

  
"Of all the women to fuck like a dog behind my back - that bitch? The ugly, fat fucking _bitch_?!" Jihoon's Mother shrieked, tears pouring down her face as she shattered the glass in the passenger window of the vehicle.

  
"Darling - stop, stop!" Jihoon's Father ran forth and seized the wailing woman in his arms, holding onto her tight until she burst into fresh tears and dropped the golf club, falling down onto her knees. Wonwoo gripped Jihoon's shoulder as his own Mother ran past and helped the poor woman off the ground, supporting and holding her in her arms as they walked to the front entrance of the Hotel, talking to each other quietly. Jihoon didn't speak as his Father climbed into the Mercedes Benz and drove off so brutally that cream-stone gravel flew everywhere.

  
"Oh, shit. My Grandmother was here tonight." Jihoon said. "This will be a birthday party no one will ever forget. Maybe Victoria and Elizabeth can forgive; maybe everyone can. But never forget."

\------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Jihoon's Father took two nurofen tablets and swallowed them, a headache splitting his head apart.

To get his attention, Jihoon seized a jar of pickled olives and smashed it to the ground. Glass, juice, preservative and olives covered the wooden floor in the kitchen of their cottage of the Pentrose estate.

"Hypocrite!" Jihoon said. "Everyday you tell me to be a good man, an honourable man, a smart man, a happy man, an ambitious man, a appreciative, respectufl, decent, wonderful fucking man. And you're doing this - you're screwing someone behind Mum's back!"

"It's not like that!" Jihoon's Father exclaimed.

"Everyday you tell me this and you go and do this; oh, no, Dad, don't keep your cock in your pants!" Jihoon seized another jar - this time one full of halfed, peeled, and de-seeded apricots - and smashed it to the ground.

"You weren't supposed to find out like this!" The older man protested; Jihoon shook his head sourly, sticking his tongue in his mouth. He picked up a jar of another type of olive, holding it in the air for a moment, before letting that shatter on the ground as well. It made his Father shake his hands up and down in rage.

"Everyone knows, Dad. Everyone. Your boss is Wonwoo's Mum; you are employed by Mrs Jeon as her cord on bleu. This woman is best friends with your wife who you've cheated on. So, she fires you, she and Wonu's Father take away our house because this house we do not own. This house on the Pentrose estate was given to you and Mum as newlyweds and Mum was five months pregnant with me; you needed a job and a home - so, voile. And, as your son, and her son too - how am I supposed to deal with this?" Jihoon said, speaking calmer.

"Well, at least I don't behave like a pathetic little child smashing things on the ground." Jihoon's Father clapped his hands together. "Especially about things I don't actually have any idea about."

Jihoon breathed in through his mouth, his eyes dead, before he turned on his heel and walked out of the French doors on the other side of the kitchen, going down the garden steps and out to where he had his motorcycle. Jihoon's Father swore as soon as his son left in a roar of the Kwasasaki engine, Wonwoo's father, Jeon Senior, came through his front door with the spare key.

"Why?" The man said to him, stepping around the fruit and olives and glass smashed on the floor to sit at the kitchen table with Li.

"You're asking for a simple answer to a very complicated question." Li replied.

"Come on!" Jeon yelled. "You know that A-Yeong's given you everything!"

"I know, you're quite right; you've no idea how much I appreciate her looking after everything - the house, the garden, always." Li replied wearily. "When Jihoon was a baby and the doctors said to us to arrange a funeral because his lung troubles meant he wouldn't live. Through all of that and when he was little at school - everything. I can't put it into words."  
"Do you love her?" Jeon asked, not seeking personal details about her.

"Are you talking about A-Yeong or -" Li moved his hands.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, of course I'm talking about A-Yeong." 

"Then, of course I do. Yes, very much so. Then why?" Jeon said exasperatedly.

"Because she hasn't had sex with me in five years, she's more concerned about the Pentrose than me, I thought she was having sex with someone else last year - remember Ataru Homura whose daughter you think would be a perfect wife for Wonwoo? I saw A-Yeong kissing his cheek and been close to him and giggling and been all smiling." Li opened up his arms in a sardonic gesture. "Any fucking wonder that I wanted someone else?"


	2. Second Partner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jisoo thinks back to the early days of he and Wonwoo's relationship, including the time Wonwoo realized that it is genuinely possible to be allergic to water; Li's life where women and concerned hit a new low, Wonwoo has some important questions for Joshua, and Jeon Senior has a heart-attack in his 1940's Mark IV SS Jaguar, and doesn't go so quietly to the other side

Joshua sat on the edge of the bathtub in the bathroom just down the hall of Wonwoo's bedroom. Wonwoo's Mother was staying that night at a empty suite in the Pentrose she had given to A-Yeong - Jihoon's Mother - and Wonwoo's Father was staying that night in his office at the hotel.

Wonwoo's families private residence was further up the Gyeryongsan mountain, where the Pentrose was essentially built on the side of it, of the South face.

He thought about the first time he and Wonwoo had sex.

_Wonwoo's families Doctor's wedding was been held at the Pentrose. Wonwoo had invited Joshua along. It had been the middle of the winter, and the weather was due to not rain, but he overcast and cold. Joshua didn't bring his umbrella that day. Wonwoo had driven down in his Father's 1940's Mark IV SS Jaguar - bright red with a convertible roof and gracious curves sweeping low at the boot and rear seats before sweeping up over the hub-caps at the front of the vehicle with a moulded bonnet - to pick Joshua up from the train station. "It's not formal, but I've got a evening jacket for you in the back." Wonwoo grinned warmly as Joshua momentarily had a heartattack as he climbed into the passenger seat of the manual-drive vehicle, and curiously pressed his fingers to the soft-top ceiling above them. Joshua had been even more amazed when arriving at the Pentrose, and then the jacket nailed it off; luxury cars, luxury property and multi-million pound hotel, restaurant, and luxury boyfriend who had eyed up his measurements the first time he had clapped eyes on him, apparently. "You're so easy to look at." Wonwoo smiled as he had shifted the vehicle through its gears, and Joshua had gazed in awe at the thick tree-lined private avenue that swept and curved around the mountain for a kilometer and a half to the Pentrose. _

_The Doctor's ceremony held in a huge white marquee in one of four courtyards in the person grounds of the Pentrose had gone without a hitch, and his wife - Wonwoo told him - had been wearing a wedding dress made by the wife of his Mother's cord on blue, Li A-Yeong. "My best friend is their son, Jihoon. You'll meet him later - and, sorry if it's all really confusing, I don't say things right all the time. Mum and Dad started up the hotel and restaurant back in the late 1970's; they both did cooking and the Hotel part, but now Dad is in charge of the cottages and other property we have - plus the land - and Mum is the head chef in the restaurant, with Jihoon's Dad been her right-hand-man." Joshua had known straight-up that Wonwoo's family and their friends and company didn't know that they were together. In surprise to himself, Joshua was completely fine with that. It didn't really matter much at all. Before he met Wonwoo, he wouldn't have understood any of it, but, now in the moment, it was just so insignificant when he had Wonwoo directly beside him and a manor-cum-castle that looked like it should be in England instead of on the side of a rural mountain in South Korea._

_When they got away from the hustle and bustle of the wedding party at the top of the property, Wonwoo's fingers intertwined with Joshua's as they walked along through landscape with natural, old forest and more native plants, though Joshua still saw Anglo-Saxon orchids, daffodils, bluebells, jonquils, snow-drops, roses, gardenias, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, Cyprus pine trees, and Slavic pines with Acorn, Scandinavian Birch and Ash trees. All of a sudden after ten minutes of walking and constant garden, there came to be a series of crumbling brick walls that led even further down the side of the mountain to dams that were like natural swimming pools with wooden peers, and - "Is that a rice field?" Joshua burst out laughing, pointing in the distance. "Four hundred acres." Wonwoo said by way of reply. The two of them began to talk, and talk they did for a long time. He had just finished telling Wonwoo how he was allergic to water and how it genuinely was a real thing, before it began to rain. _

_Automatically Jisoo shouted out and began to run, feling his skin burn everywhere - his scalp, his face, his hands - as the rain, heavy and hard, fell on him. "Oh, fucking Jesus Christ, you weren't lying!" Wonwoo stared agape at Joshua as he breathed heavy; Wonwoo stared down at Joshua's hands which were mottled colours of white and red, and marks were appearing on Jisoo's jawline and his throat, barely one, two minutes after the rain began to fall. "Shit, come with me, quick." Jisoo ran with Wonwoo awkwardly, trying to go go head-first down the hill as Wonwoo led him to a traditional styled Korean home, on the one story, and about as big what the average master bedroom plus half that again would be. Standing underneath the eaves, Jisoo trembled as Wonwoo hurriedly pulled out the key to the cottage - more like hut - hidden in one of the beams, and unlocked the door, ushering Joshua inside. Joshua quickly pulled his shoes and his socks off - they been sodden wet - along with his jeans and his shirt, just trying to get the wet fabric from his burning skin. Joshua's mouth fell open as he realized that in doing this he was naked, and in everything else that was current - he being at Wonwoo's families property and the rain and the tiny beach hut...which had candles, wardrobes, tables, rugs, a dressing-screen, and a double-bed freshly made up to perfection with diamond shaped glass windows, twelve little panes to a whole window which opened up onto a few of the mountains and the descending rice-field on the mountain side - it was the first time he was naked in front of Wonwoo. _

_Joshua knew he shouldn't feel like that - it was Wonwoo - but Joshua had never felt more vulnerable in his life. He was hideous right now, covered in nasty red blotches from the water that were varying shades of pink, red, purple, yellow, lilac and even a funny grey colour; all over his neck, face, chest, legs, back, hands, arms, throat, scalp, feet, even some on his thighs and knees. Joshua moved one of his hands down to cover himself up. He breathed in and out heavily, searching Wonwoo's face as Wonwoo gazed at him, looking at all of his body and the marks that water had given him. Wonwoo's hair was wet and clinging to his forehead, as was Joshua's. The air was fraught and unfamiliar inbetween them as Wonwoo reached out and pushed some of Joshua's hair back from his face. Joshua hissed a breath, looking at the ground and turning his head to the side as Wonwoo's wet hands touched a welt on his neck. Wonwoo's hand hovered near him for a moment before falling away. He undid four buttons of his button-up shirt and pulled it over his head, leaving it to the floor. Joshua stared at Wonwoo; the lean lines of muscle and the defintion in his hairless chest and his broad shoulders. The way Wonwoo's torso curved down into a V shape, and the lines along the front of his stomach and hips from where he worked chopping wood, making altars, doing carpentry work and landscape had made of him. Joshua became even more ashamed of his body, skinny and fatless and the lines and the shape of it made practically effiminate by his incapability to exercise because even his perspiration would make his skin flare up. _

_Therefore he watched what he ate. Joshua moved his hands away from his body, stop trying to cover himself up as he gazed at Wonwoo's body still in his pants with his belt. Joshua steadily felt a release of the human kind building up in him, making his mind thoughtless and his limbs free and unhampered in smooth, flowing movements. Wonwoo's hands curved around Joshua's neck, each thumb of the tip of Joshua's jaw as their mouths collided together, and everything else in the world just vanished._

Joshua clenched the edge of the bath-tub, emerging from his memories as he realized he had probably just been sitting there for a good five minutes, and Wonwoo was probably waiting in bed for him. Wonwoo had said to Joshua he was welcome to have a wander about the house as his phone rang and it turned out to be the manager from the hotel, needing information about something. In the second story of the home where it had a cathedral ceiling and the staircase appeared in the middle of the second floor as a stairwell. At one end of the second floor was the huge master bedroom and ensuite, then three spare bedrooms, an office, and what was Bo Hyuk's bedroom at the other end of the second story.

On the south-facing wall was a circular nautical window like that of a sub-marine. In recent years, Wonwoo's paternal Grandmother had come to live with them, so his bedroom on the second floor became hers - right beside his parents room so they could check on her in the middle of the night without going up and down the stairs to the annexe on the ground floor just off from the laundry. It had worked out that Wonwoo had taken the annexe downstairs, and a chair-lift had been installed, though his grandmother only used it a few times a month, still managing to climb the stairs on her own. Joshua didn't know why he came into the bathroom; it was a nice one with a traditional wood floor and cream coloured tiles and walls. He supposed he just wanted to think. _That man is all I need_, Joshua thought of Wonwoo. His breath faltered in his chest. _What the hell did I just think?_

\--------------------------------------------------

"A-Yeong." Li walked into his kitchen to find his wife sitting at their kitchen table in a pair of jeans and a button-up shirt.

  
"You realize you've absolutely humiliated me?" She said, not looking at him, but rather out of the window at the scenery of the mountains. "But then again you're just my husband; but it's happened in this hotel on this estate in front of all of my friends, your friends, our friends. I counted A-Yeong as my friend."

  
"I'm sorry." Li exhaled.

  
"Why her?" A-Yeong asked. "Of all the people you could have screwed, why her?"

  
"That's hard to explain." Li deflated.

  
"Well, you'd better fucking well try if you want this marriage to last another heartbeat." A-Yeong's mouth set in a firm, hard line.

  
"Bella - she just....she just knows me." Li stuttered, moving his palms together back and forth. "Knows what I'm feeling and thinking before I say it. I don't even have to try. It's...it's as if we - we - go together. Two ingriediants that work." He looked at A-Yeong as she stared emotionlessly back at him.

  
"And we don't?" She said, looking down at the surface of the table. What hung unsaid in the air between them was how Kim Bella had looked after Jihoon often when he was a baby and A-Yeong had needed help when Jihoon was working late hours with Chae-Seon in the restaurant.

  
"For you and me it's different -" Li began.

  
"I could get past the sex, Li, because I knew I had you. But clearly I was fooling myself. The fights we used to have where we yell and scream. We don't have them anymore. It doesn't matter anymore." A-Yeong got from the table and walked out of the house, even though Li called after her. He sat for a long time at their table afterwards which had little drawings in black marker on the underside from when Jihoon had been a toddler and had decided to be an artist. He had got one of the bedrooms upstairs as well on the same day, but that had managed to be cleaned off.

\------------------------------------------------

Li ran down the main street of the village, and neatly jumped over Bella's front garden fence and into her 1950's Hanok home, traditional and authentic inside as the music from Western Europe she played on vinyl records when she was organizing her pot-plants. "Please, Bella, will you go and see her?"

  
"Why the hell would I help you?" Bella turned around and said, her hands on her hips. Bella was a fifty four year old woman, a size eighteen, with large breasts despite her weight and a handsomely classic Korean face where lines had appeared around her eyes and either side of her mouth. She was still beautiful despite showing her age, with her red lipstick and brown eye-makeup. At the moment, she was wearing an apron and carrying a bag of plant fertiliser. 

  
"Because she won't even talk to me!" Li gestured with his hands. "You can talk to her and explain things - that there was nothing between us and it's all a mistake."

  
Bella threw the bag of fertiziler at his feet with a loud thump. "Please, it's really very important to me." Li implored. "I need us to show a united front on this. Well, what do you think?"

  
"I think you're pathetic." Bella's eyes narrowed.

  
"You don't understand, divorce isn't an option." Li held both of Bella's dirty hands in his. "This is just really bad timing. Please, can we not put aside our differences, Bella, and help me sort this out -"

  
"No, I am not going to help you because you don't deserve me." Bella slapped his hands away. "And you certainly don't deserve A-Yeong. Of course she should divorce you!" Bella walked inside through the front door, but didn't let Li in as he followed her.  
"Now, please, could you leave and never come back? You've got no idea how bad I feel for poor Jihoon in all of this. It's ten 'o' clock, go to sleep." She said, before slamming the front door closed.

\------------------------------------------------------

"Can't drink." Joshua shook his head, laughing, as Wonwoo opened the bedside table and pulled out a bottle of wine. "With the antehistmines I just go to sleep for twelve hours."  
Wonwoo chuckled. "I probably shouldn't be doing this either. If you hear noises in the middle of the night, it's just Jihoon. I said he could come and stay on the couch for a few nights if he wants. Jihoon can cook just as good - better, even - than his Father. Mum said that if his Dad came anywhere near the Pentrose she would stab him for cheating on A-Yeong. So, tonight and for the next few nights, Jihoon is helping Mum in the kitchen; her now confirmed protege when she can see properly first-hand what he's like under pressure."

  
"Your families are good friends?" Joshua said.

  
"The Li's were high-school friends of my parents. They've been concrete ever since." Wonwoo crossed over his index and middle fingers, illustrating. "Not many people do what they do with making the hotel and the land and the restaurant and still have a relationship survive it, and come out even better because of it."

  
"I saw your Dad earlier." Joshua smiled. "Now I know where you get your good looks from."

  
"Did Jeonghan take the car with him when he left?" Wonwoo asked quickly. "Just so I know when I have to drop you off at the station..." Wonwoo trailed off as Joshua smiled awkwardly.

  
"That's the thing, he hasn't left. He just went and parked the car in one of the barns - he had a word to the manager about it." Joshua said. "He's um...gotten a bit friendly with either Victoria or Elizabeth."

  
"Good luck for him if their Father finds out." Wonwoo remarked lightly, not looking all that impressed.

  
"Hey." Joshua laid with his head on Wonwoo's chest. He ran a hand down over Wonwoo's stomach. "Wonwoo -"

  
"No, there's -" Wonwoo hesitated as Joshua looked up at him. "There's something I want to ask you." He cupped Joshua's face, and he smiled a little bit as Joshua leaned into it like a cat, going warm-eyed. "What would you say if I asked you would you like to come and live here?"

  
Joshua gazed at him, speechless for a few moments, before hurriedly sitting up. His throat had gone dry. "But...but your family doesn't know." He said un-gracefully. "And it doesn't bother me that they don't know and it's not open, I know you don't want that and -"

  
"No, no, Josh, it doesn't have to be like that." Wonwoo said, coaxing Joshua back to lay in his arms again. Joshua curled up against Wonwoo's side, Wonwoo kissing the top of his head tenderly.

  
"What I was thinking is that you could come and live in one of the cottages we have here in the property, or in one of the Hanok's in the village. You wouldn't have to worry about paying rent anymore, and Gyeryongsan would be better for your health. You're not breathing in car fumes and smog constantly like you do in Seoul. We could see each other easier and more often, and you won't have to be on a train all the time. I know that all your friends and your job is in the city, but would you at the least think about it for me?" Wonwoo asked.

\--------------------------------

"God, haven't I made a mess of things?" Jeon observed his own body slumped over the steering wheel of the Jaguar, his elbow leaning against the horn, making it blast and blast and blast. "By the way, I didn't kill myself. You know my chest pains? One tablet didn't seem to do it. I only took three." Jeon commented as his oldest son - a_nd who was that other boy in the black shirt and jeans -_

  
"He was at Elizabeth and Victoria's birthday yesterday." Jeon said to himself. "Must be from Elizabeth's art class."

  
Jeon eyebrows went up, sitting on the roof of his house, he watched his son rush to the Jaguar and pull Jeon's body off the steering wheel which it had been slumped over.  
"Been dead is getting off to a great start. I was a sucess; Chae-Seon and I. All her recipes, all of our work. Our hotel was everything; Wonwoo and Bo Hyuk." Jeon murmured to himself as the second boy rushed inside as Wonwoo screamed for an ambulance, and checked for a pulse Jeon knew he wouldn't find in his neck.

  
"A bit of advice to you living, Wonwoo." Jeon said. "Be careful what you leave behind when you go; because it means everyone is going to see it. For the record as well, Heaven isn't really such a marvellous place. I got up there and they all looked like they were having platonic, age-friendly orgies." Jeon huffed a laugh. " Oh, my son, don't cry." Jeon winced as a few tears slipped down his son's face, the young man otherwise completely silent, still supporting the dead man's head so it wouldn't roll and crick on his shoulders.

  
Jeon un-clasped and clasped his hands together up on the roof of what had been his house as Wonwoo rushed inside to confirm to the paramedics on the other end of the line that the patient in question had no pulse.

  
"Trust me, what is about to take place..." Jeon sighed, looking down at the second boy who on all accounts appeared to be able to see him. "Been dead doesn't make it any easier."


	3. Secrets / / Guilty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The death of Jeon hits hard and begins it's time to erupt as he meditates on the choices he made in his life, with a formal introduction of Bo Hyuk, Wonwoo's little brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, I want to confirm, Jeon is dead. Absolutely dead in a morgue. But every culture throughout the world has it's beliefs about the dead, and what happens to them, as does every individual human. For the work - from the chapter before and until the end - I've given it a slightly spiritualistic turn

"This morning, paramedics found Jeon Senior has passed away from cardiac arrest. He couldn't be revived." A-Yeong told the staff of the Hotel and the restaurant in the kitchen; the maids, the waiters and waitresses, the kitchen assitants, delivery drivers, the gardeners and accountants and the structural maitenance staff. Jihoon stood with the staff, hand in hand with one of the waitresses who had passed out earlier having been the one picked to tell the hotel manager - Sungjin - that their boss was dead.

"From now until next week, we ask you to not come into work as our family has time to grieve. Before you leave today you will recieve a weeks worth of wages in your deposit accounts of your banks. I'm sorry that I have to be the one telling you this instead of my husband at the moment, and I believe that all of us can excuse Mrs Jeon at the present time."

Away from the Pentrose's kitchen's in her home, Chae-Seon cried softly on the couch with her Mother-in-Law, the nieces Elizabeth and Victoria comforting her and making tea as their Mother, absolutely silent in the news of her brother's death, made the nessecity phone-calls to the solicitors and the undertakers and the hospital about Jeon's body.

"When a man gets to a certain age, he starts to care about his legacy. The things he leaves behind. In my case, it is complicated." Jeon talked to both himself, his son Wonwoo who was calling his brother travelling around China about their Father's death, and that strangely thin and mildly effiminate boy in the black jeans, sitting on the floor by Wonwoo's feat, watching the sky through the window as it rained. His expression was interesting; it was like he yearned for it, yet shielded away from it. 

Bo Hyuk canceled the phone call from his brother, and looked around in the kitchen of his girlfriend's house around him, a little cottage in Japan. He had been washing the dishes when he had got the call. Bo Hyuk looked at the dishes in the drainer, and one by one, smashed them to the floor, feeling grief rise up like a dragon in his body as his girlfriend rushed downstairs in a dressing gown - soaking wet from the shower - and tried to calm him down in entangled Japanese and Korean language.

"There are things to be mended. There are people I have hurt. Yes, my name was Jeon and I was a professional entrepenur. This used to be my hotel. Maybe in time my death will be something fortunate for everyone. You'd wonder why, but...wait and see. It might just be the best thing that has ever happened to this family. This is just the beginning of more to come."


	4. Tell The Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lines of war are set between Jeon Chae-Seon and her Mother-In-Law about the deceased's funeral arrangments, as Wonwoo attempts his best to be a good son for his family when all hell is breaking loose due to a letter even Jeon Senior he admits he should never have written, even though it was a lot of fun and embodied jaw-dropping primeval fantasy and the traditions of old-world Korea. A-Yeong and Jihoon talked about grief and Wonwoo, Jeonghan and Joshua tried to work out what happened at the Pentrose, and both A-Yeong and Chae-Seon come to realize that they've become women of significant power

In the back seat of a bright silver Audi that was been driven by Kwak Victoria with her sister - the younger twin - Elizabeth in the passenger seat, Joshua quickly typed a text on his phone to Jeonghan, asking him to fucking well pick up his calls because he wasn't at the Pentrose anymore; the twins were taking him to their house so don't drive to the Pentrose and ask the manager about "Wonwoo's mate, Joshua".

  
"They say death comes to us all -" Jeon laughed, looking down at the screen of the boy's phone. The dead man made a mental note of his name; _Joshua Hong. Born and raised in America, but he had come back to homeland. He was now a fully equipped and educated man who may or may not be coming to live on his property_. "But what they don't tell you is that nobody just leaves. No, we all leave traces, echoes, and trouble. Lots of trouble. There was one damn letter somewhere I should never have written." Jeon glanced over to his nieces as they began to chatter to Joshua, coaxing him out of his quietness. "This one might be actually quite useful." Jeon studied him. "What are you doing with my son, Josh?" Jeon asked him crossing his legs in the seat behind the drivers. 

  
"One lie can ruin a thousand truths." Jeon got back to his line of thought. "And the truth is Li loves A-Yeong. The truth is I've done a lot of things concerning the hotel and restaurant I shouldn't have done in hindsight over the years. And another truth is, no one will ever tell A-Yeong. My poor wife hasn't tried at all, and the other woman - Bella, who I believe used to looked after Jihoon when he was little - won't tell her. I'm not a ghost." Jeon shook his head. "Somehow, I'm still loved. By my mother, my sons, my wife, my staff. That's what ties us dead down to hell. Been loved even after death. Heaven and Hell is a load of rubbish to scare the living. Effective, I must admit." Jeon rolled his eyes. 

  
"You have to tell him, love!" A-Yeong exclaimed to her best friend and Jeon's widow, Chae-Seon. They were alone in the kitchens of the Pentrose, all the staff taking their holiday and all the guests having been requested to leave last night.

  
Chae-Seon pursed her lips, rolling dough. 

  
"Please, look at me." A-Yeong said hopelessly. Chae-Seon looked at her stonily, pushing her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose.

  
"When I'm sad I cook, when I'm happy I cook, when I'm angry I cook." Chae-Seon delivered. "I just don't see how it's relevant. It's the Autumn, now."

  
"No, not any of your spiritualites and supernatural." A-Yeong leaned on the other side of the metal bench in the kitchen, looking firmly at her friend. "You need to tell Wonu he's the head of all this now."

  
"He's twenty-three years old." Chae-Seon raised her eyebrows.

  
"God, you really have no faith or you're really upset more than you say." A-Yeong frowned so darkly that it made Chae-Seon's own expression falter. "Wonwoo is the most mature, understanding, capable, appreciative, intelligent man who could even run the idea of this place let alone actually -"

  
"I agree." Chae-Seon slammed the rolling pin down into the dough. She inclined her head to A-Yeong. "If there is to be two men ever involved here, let it be the sons of the original men; Jihoon and Wonwoo. Ah, that's another thing. Li has made enough of his own money in this kitchen to retire. He can continue making money with the gardening and the produce we grow here in the Greenhouses and from the rice-field. He is welcome to that. Because of this I give his job to Jihoon and have him as my apprentice. Your husband should be more than delighted, and should want this for Jihoon. I won't confirm it officially until after the funeral, but this is what is happening." She smiled, but it was tough. "Alright, my sister -" Chae-Seon stroked A-Yeong's face, using the term for her. "Let's have it on, then. You and I shall run this place, Jihoon is my apprentice, Wonwoo gets involved in the entrepreneurial part of things, and, frankly, you and I are women on top, and those boys get richer everyday. Come around the bench and give me a kiss?"

\-------------------------------------------

Wonwoo looked through his Father's desk in his study at their home, fishing through his papers and envelopes full of notes. Wonwoo knew his Father kept a copy of his final will and testament in a black moleskin folder; the legal one was in the hands of the solicitor's, but Wonwoo knew his Father had made one full of extra little things he wanted at his funeral and so forth. At the bottom of the draw, Wonwoo stopped and pulled out a envelope - old enough that the paper had gone yellow - with "Li, A-Yeong & My Darling Wife" written on the front.

  
As he read through it, he called up Jihoon.

  
"You won't believe it." Wonwoo scoffed. "How fast can you get here on your motorcycle? You've got to see this."

  
Fifteen minutes later, Jihoon was taking off his shoes and coming up the stairs of the Jeon household.

  
"He wants a funeral done in the Korean Shintoist tradition -" Wonwoo began to read the letter to him.

  
"That's your Mother's unfluence." Jihoon grinned broadly despite how obiously unnerved Wonwoo was by it. 

  
"And I, your Father, and "Wonwoo's wife" are to give an eulogy during the wake." Wonwoo dropped the letter back onto the table. "What does he mean "wife"?!" He said to Jihoon.  
"He meant this for thirty years time when you would be married and have kids and stuff." Jihoon answered soothingly. "He didn't know, Wonwoo. You can't fault him for that. In his head he probably thought he'd have the best-looking daughter-in-law in Asia that would be extremely happy and financially comfortable due to him."

  
"I don't fucking believe it." Wonwoo knew Jihoon was completely right in his measure of his Father's personality.

  
"So, you and Dad are giving the formal address -"

  
"And my Dad wants to be buried on the bottom of a lake after been semi-cremated." Wonwoo finished. "It's definitely his hand-writing - and the wake! It's more like a banquet - and he expects Mum to do all of this?" Wonwoo groaned, holding his head in his hands as his eyes burned warmly, and Jihoon rubbed his back.

  
"Has Wonu said anything to you about his Dad?" A-Yeong asked later on, the radio playing in their kitchen.

  
Jihoon shook his head. He briefly wondered where his Father was, before squashing the thought to reply to his Mother. He's probably been sleeping at his floozy's, Jihoon thought. "He seems fine."

  
"That's what worries me." A-Yeong sighed heavily.

  
"What about Aunt Chae-Seon?" Jihoon said.

  
"Cooking." They both said together.

  
"I could have guessed that." Jihoon remarked, rolling his eyes, putting the kettle on to boil.

  
"He'll come down when he's ready." A-Yeong said. "He needs to otherwise it'll scar him forever."

\-------------------------------------------

"Fucking hell, really?!" Jeonghan swore even more, lying across the end of Joshua's bed back in his apartment as Joshua sorted paper-work and typed away on his laptop.  
"The poor guy was slumped over the steering wheel on his car, not breathing." Joshua said softly. "We only heard him because his upper arm on the left side was leaning against the horn of the car. With his weight dead it was enough to make the horn go off. I was upstairs with Wonwoo, and by the time I had pulled on my clothes - Wonu was already up and about cleaning the kitchen and cooking - Wonwoo was yelling at me to call an ambulance because his Dad didn't have a heart-beat. I think it's the first time he's ever seen a dead body, and it had to be his Father. That's why I went missing for a while.

As soon as we finished with the Ambulance on the phone, we had to call for Wonwoo's Mum. The only car in the barn was another manual-drive with four foot pedals; I had no idea how to drive that, so I grabbed my umbrella and I was rushing off across the fields before Wonwoo's family arrived. Most of them had been too drunk to drive home from the Pentrose; his Grandmother had stayed at someone's house last night instead of coming back to the cottage, thank God."

  
"Hang on, where are we now?" Jeonghan checked.

  
"The next morning; after Elizabeth and Victoria's birthday party at the Pentrose."

  
"What time did you call the ambulance?"

  
"Nine 'o' clock." Joshua replied.

  
"Yeah, I got kicked out at seven." Jeonghan laughed to himself, but it wasn't one of humor or happiness. "I spent the night with Lizzie -"

  
"Lizzie?" Joshua echoed.

  
"But at seven she told me I had to go before her Mother or her Father came in to wake her up at for breakfast at eight. She had to jump into the bath and everything, so I left but then as I went to get the car out of the barn one of their mates asked me where the twins were because he said their Uncle has just died and everything was happening at Wonwoo's house - I didn't know where that was, they have so many house - and I didn't know where you were." Jeonghan explained. "How long were you outside for?" He leant up onto his elbows.

  
"About five hours and then I got picked up by a man with a beard and tattoos called Dido; said that Wonwoo had asked him to pick up a pair of black jeans and a umbrella he if came across one. I was terrified, it had begun to rain again." Joshua shivered.

  
"So while Wonwoo's dealing with his dead Dad and upset family plus having just found his Dad's body, he had -"  
"The head gardener." Joshua interjected on Jeonghan.

  
"Driving around looking for you because you had to do a runner out of their house because his family doesn't know about your existence, and they don't know that you and Wonwoo are together."

  
Joshua nodded. Jeonghan swore again.

  
"So, really, really bad day?"

  
"It got worse. I stayed over-night at Dido's house, then Victoria and Elizabeth picked me up in their Audi the next morning and drove me to the train station because you had already come back here in the car -"

  
"And I got told by Wonwoo you were staying there a bit longer so I could just come home by myself." Jeonghan finished.

  
"Oh for fucks sake." Joshua expressed.

\-----------------------------------------------

"Did Dad ever talk to you about his funeral?" Wonwoo asked his Mother as she ate some poached pears and a small bowl of spice baked oats sat beside her leg on the couch. It was her favourite dessert to eat; she loved chocolate but she said the calories were too much when you were over forty five. His Grandmother was sipping tea, watching them quietly on the opposite couch.

  
"I think you're Father counted himself above the inconvenience of dying." She replied, smiling gently, resting on side of her head in her palms where the sat on one of the couches in the lobby of the Hotel. The ceiling was eight meters tall with artistic modern chandliers, and the floor beneath them was floorboards. No expense spared was one of her husband's favourite phrases; graduating school, buying the mountanous land, building the cottages and then the hotel, adding bit by bit every season that came, their wedding, when Wonwoo and Bo Hyuk were born, and, now, just perhaps, his funeral.

  
"Not quite, Mum." Wonwoo ventured. She reached for the glasses that hung in the neckline of her fine-knit cream-coloured top as Wonwoo gave her the letter in its envelope.   
"Roast Pork Bulgogi, Anglo-Saxon-Fusion Galbi...." Chae-Seon said aloud intently as she read. "Ah, you know what this is?" She smiled. "This is our history, Dad and I. These are the dishes that made our name and my restaurant. Recipes from A-Yeong's Mummy - Auntie Nia - and my families recipes. The pork one was your Dad's Father's favourite dish. Cooked every year for his birthday. This menu is our marriage."

  
"I think it's ridiculous. This was why he was raised atheist to prevent any of this religious nonsense." The old lady sniffed.

  
"But this is what he wanted," Chae-Seon told her. "His last request."

  
"Maybe he should have thought about it more before writing down rubbish you put into his head." Wonwoo's hopes fell as his Grandmother's hackles raised coldly and Wonwoo knew his Mother wouldn't take any of her rubbish.

  
"So, you want me to refuse to carry out my husband's final wishes even though they are here in black and white?" Chae-Seon growled, holding the letter aloft, her food forgotten. She looked around as Wonwoo moved the bowls onto the table to prevent the upholstery on the furniture becoming stained and dirty if she were to suddenly jump up and thump his Grandmother.

  
"My son will have a perfectly respectable funeral; he is my son, and that is my duty." The Grandmother replied. "That is final."

\------------------------------------

"Can you believe she just wanted to ignore it?" Chae-Seon hissed, brutally plucking the feathers from a soaked chicken carcass. "He stopped being her son that day he put that ring on my finger. Oh, haven't heard from your brother have you?" She inquired. "Dad's dead, but he's still with that bloody girl in Japan! Your Dad's dying wishes of me and fucking Li and Auntie A-Yeong!"

  
"Sorry, Mum." Wonwoo said, fetching a packet of flour from the cupboard, before checking his phone for texts from Joshua. "Did he ever mention it to you before? That he wanted to go off like a king?"

  
Chae-Seon huffed a sardonic laugh. "Your Father was a dickhead when I first met him. Shallow of all things spiritual and human. Supernatural, I can understand him lacking. But just his mannerisms and so on - he was so modern but he had so much passion. Passion without spirituality and humanism is a waste - it becomes a ugly mess. Within two weeks of meeting me he was a completely different man. He was decent before, but now he was kind. That's your Dad. We both helped each other."

Suddenly, pots and pans crashed to the floor as she opened another cupboard door too violently. Wonwoo went over to help her pick up the items, and noticed how her eyes were watering again.


	5. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chae-Seon's moment of grief comes, Jihoon lays eyes again on a woman "friend" of Wonwoo's he cannot stand, and the biggest question between he and Wonwoo - Infidelity over Death?

"And you?" Joshusa said to Wonwoo on the phone later that night. "How are you coping?"

  
"I'm fine. I miss him. Want him to come back. Mum can't sleep because for the last twenty-five thirty years he's been beside her. She can't stand the empty bed or sleeping in the centre of the bed." Wonwoo confessed.

  
"The moment comes." Joshua replied after a few moments. "When you've been with someone so long and then you lose them, you don't really feel it at first. And then, the moment comes and it hits you with the force of a wrecking ball. You'll probably hear her scream, and cry, and she'll need someone to hold her for a long time. Your Aunt, Jihoon's Mum, your Grandmother."

\---------------------------------------------

Wonwoo turned around as he walked down one of the side streets in the mountain's village, hearing the sound of a motorcycle engine, then seeing Jihoon riding his Kasasaki bike towards him with no helmet but due to the Autumn chill in the air he wore his leather jacket.

  
"Hi." Wonwoo said as Jihoon changed the clutch through it's gears on the bike, turning off the engine and parking it on the stand outside a little cafe. Even though they had no intention of buying from the cafe, Jihoon and Wonwoo sat down on seats sat outside on the concrete footpath.

  
"Hi." Jihoon leant back in his chair, crossing his arms, indicating for Wonwoo to talk. When he didn't, Jihoon ventured forth.

  
"It's weird. All of this." He said as Wonwoo looked across the road to very little children toddling along by themselves before their Father ran and caught the children into their arms, carrying tiny bodies over their shoulders and under their arms back to their Mother's pushing prams.

  
"It's not just weird, it's fucking weird." Wonwoo said darkly, the sight he had just gazed on making him bitter inside. Within the space of a few seconds, he had gone from numb and sort of un-thinking to overwhelmingly human and all-feeling.

  
"So, how is Chae-Seon?" Jihoon asked.

  
"Cooking and having a fight with Grandmother. Grandmother wants either a normal atheist funeral with a official at the undertakers, or, if it is to be religeous, Church of England - how she was personally brought up before she married my antichrist Grandfather." Wonwoo laughed a bit, but it was sour. "Grandmother seems ignorant to the fact that Mum comes from a Korean Shintoist family and it was Shintoist hands and money and recipes that made our name. Shintoist people's live in our cottages and work our rice field. How's your Mum?"

  
"Um..." Jihoon breathed a laugh. "I don't really know. She doesn't really talk to me and I don't really care what Dad is doing right now."

  
"Sound like heaven." Wonwoo commented, raising an eyebrow. Storm clouds had started to gather over the village and the mountain, and the sight made something close to pleased bloom in his soul. This is what he needed at the moment; filthy weather to go with a filthy life and a filthy mood.

  
"Would you prefer it that way?" Jihoon asked. "Infidelity over death?"

  
"Of course I would." Wonwoo looked at Jihoon sharply. He exhaled a breath, softening it as it obviously cut Jihoon. Wonwoo's own parents were practically a second set to Jihoon; providing he wasn't doing something else, Jeon would take Jihoon fishing for produce for the restaurant with he, Bo Hyuk and Wonwoo on Sundays. "Do you want to swap? You'd have to live with two dysfunctional women plus my aunt and Elizabeth and Victoria have virtually moved in but you'd never go hungry."

  
"Oh my God!" Wonwoo turned around at the shout of a girl's voice. The familiar sight of Lisa Lu jogged lightly up the street to him, in a tight denim skirt and a red-and-white breton striped top with her thick black hair in a bun, a fringe swept over to one side of her forehead. She was sweet-looking; the picture perfect Ulzzang girl. "I'm so sorry - are you alright?"

  
"Yeah, yeah, I think so."

  
Jihoon's mouth twisted in an ugly expression as Lisa's arms wrapped around Wonwoo in a hug.

  
_"How the fuck can she tell you're not straight?" Jihoon had remarked one day. "Everytime she comes up fawning over you it gives me the shits. You don't act like gay men; you're not a faerie or a boof and you're not a total prick. But how the fuck can she not tell you're not interested?"_

  
Jihoon looked down at the ground giving a begrudging smile as Wonwoo's eyes widened over Lisa's shoulder at him. Lisa rubbed her hands up and down Wonwoo's arms.

Jihoon's chest jumped up in a silent scoff, his mouth falling open degradingly as Lisa asked - genuinely emotional - "Does this mean you're an orphan?" to Wonwoo.  
"Uh...well, I suppose so, yeah." Wonwoo replied, looking again at Jihoon, who rolled his eyes heavily.

  
"How do you feel?"

  
"I feel alone."

  
_This is making me sick; why the fuck is he even trying to please her_? Jihoon thought.

  
"You're not alone. Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?" Jihoon genuinely felt his stomach turn over at Lisa's simpering response.

  
"He's not available, sweetheart." Jihoon raised an eyebrow, before getting Wonwoo by his arm and pulling him roughly. As a rule, Jihoon had a quiet personality, but Lisa Lu put his blood pressure through the roof. "Bye." He whispered over his shoulder to her as he pulled Wonwoo onto the second seat of his motor-cycle and pressed the clutch into gear, twisting the throttle roughly.

  
\-------------------------------------------

  
"Every man remembers - even vaguely - what the face of the first girl who really, really got to him looked like. Her face, at the least, and then sometimes every part of them." Jeon remarked, sitting on the stone floor of a Shintoist temple his wife frequented twice a week. He looked over at her, tears streaming down her face as she burnt incence and murmured old hangul dialect, the smoke from the burning wicks blowing out into a soft wind that was blowing through the intensely thick forest and garden that was planted around the two hundred year old structure. "They also remember the first time. No, not like that." Jeon laughed. "The first time he can't get an erection up." Jeon said in a quieter tone, observing the fact he was in a religeous house, even though he knew for one that naturalism - and sex been the biggest part of human naturalism - was the basis along with shamanism, animaism, animalism - a seperate thing to animaism - and tribalism of Korean Shintoism. "That's why Jihoon loathes Lisa Lu and Wonwoo will always be kind to her. He told me what happened when he was fifteen. Wonu thought his mother would kill him, been under the legal age. I never bothered much over that. It didn't work anyhow for him. Stupid of him, but, poor kid. Trust me. Dying is easy compared to that."

  
Jeon got up from the floor, wincing. "Been dead either doesn't stop the beginning of rheumatic joints, either." He warned. "From about forty-nine onwards, you have to start getting up out of the furniture using your arms, not your back and legs. It's a rude awakening." He walked over to Chae-Seon who was leaning against the thick railing of the balcony, staring out of the forest and the fog surrounding the mountains. Jeon looked up as drop by drop, cold rain began to fall until it was a din upon the temples roof. He reached out to tuck some of Chae-Seon's hair behind her ear as he noticed her shivering; "Another part of being dead is that I can't give her my jacket anymore." He looked down at his clothes. The ensemble was the suit he had been wearing at Elizabeth and Victoria's wedding.

  
All of a sudden, Chae-Seon doubled over and let loose a blood-curldling shriek of pure grief that made Jeon stumble back and cover his ears as she sunk down to the ground on her hands and knees, wails ripping from her body.

  
"You bastard!" She screamed. "Why - the - hell - did - you - have - to - leave - me - alone?!" She slammed her hands curled tightly into fists down onto the stone floor, her body trembling as tears poured down from her eyes.

  
"How do you expect me to do all of this by myself?" She howled. "Why - did - you - have - to - go?!" She beat her hands against the ground again and wailed more from the pain she must have felt.

  
Even though the Priest could have just walked through him, Jeon moved out of the way as a female priestess - a Mu - ran across the temple to the balcony as the rain fell heavier and more ferociously, thunder and lightening beginning to electrify the sky and shake the ground beneath their feet of it's power. "Chae-Seon's faith in her religion has always been powerful enough to make her a Goddess, herself." Jeon said, looking at the weather. "And my death has finally made her one. Oh, darling..." He looked down at his wife been held in the arms of the Mu, rocked back and forth quietly as the grief poured out.


	6. Funeral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Funeral service of Jeon, presented forthwith. Everyone is involved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really think it is, but I apologise if this is in any way too emotional; I myself was writing from personal experiences at losing a parent at a young age, and listening to Daniel Jang's cover of Lewis Capaldi's "Someone You Loved" and Dermot Kennedy's "Rome" probably only further enhanced it. Nevertheless my anxiety, I hope you enjoy it. As I say, this is utter bullshit. It's made up, it's fiction. It's a character assessment of human nature and the human soul.

"The body - naked and cleaned - goes to the temple wrapped in blue silk robes with runes drawn on the face, chest, and neck of the deceased, all in a wooden cart drawn by horses. Then, the funeral traditions, which has all the deceased's family obligated to take part for the sake of all around them and their passed beloved. Next, the burial service. Finally, a feast set to send any man to the afterlife." Jeon explained, sitting beside his body in the canoe like open coffin that held his body so it just wasn't laid down bare in the cart. "And that boy with the umbrella and the black jeans is back at my house. Joshua Hong. Except he's got a white shirt and a black jacket on this time. He doesn't realize Wonwoo is here. Most people think about death their whole lives. I never really gave it the time of day. But funerals, now they're another matter. Not many people get to look down on their own funeral, and I've got a front row seat. This is going to be good." Jeon smiled, looking up at the backs of his Mother and Wife. 

  
Bo Hyuk had arrived back from Japan in time for the funeral; he and Wonwoo observed their Father's body as it was loaded by the bemused undertakers into the wooden cart where their Grandmother, mother, and Wu - a male shintoist priest - rode and steered up-front.

The horses's coats were gleaming, translucently black and as impeccable as the suits Wonwoo, Bo Hyuk, Jihoon, Dido, and Li wore. The rest of them drove further up the mountain from the village undertakers and funeral directors while Chae-Seon and her Mother-in-Law stayed with the Wu for the Dawn journey up the dirt roads of the Gyreongsan mountain.

  
"Your Father was born of the water." Chae-Seon with A-Yeong beside her side had explained to all of the immeidate family and close friends attending the evening before. "So he will go to the water. His body will be blessed and he will recieve gold and other precious metals tucked into his robes. He will be..." She hesitated. "He will be buried in the centre of the lake along the North of the hotel. In the centre. We will come out in boats and lower him down...."

  
"You don't have to be there to witness this." A-Yeong cut in for Wonwoo, Bo Hyuk and Jihoon's sakes. "Elizabeth and Victoria and you're Auntie will be there for the blessings -"  
"Why don't you just say you're going to tip Dad's body into a lake and weigh him down with fucking rocks?!" Bo Hyuk yelled out suddenly. "Oh, after you semi-cremate him. Just char up his flesh a bit, and then - boom - he's making a public lake disgusting."

  
"He really wanted all this?" Bo Hyuk said to Chae-Seon, briefly hugging his Mother on the front steps of the temple. 

  
"Oh, your Dad loved the tradition and the prehistoric detail." Chae-Seon kissed her youngest son's cheek. "And been the centre of attention."

  
"I think it's creepy. All these people watching a dead person." Bo Hyuk's knees began to hurt from kneeling down on the stone floor of the Shintoist temple after barely a minute. He had felt even worse as he saw tears slip down his Grandmother and Mother's face as the funeral service began. The female and male priests - the Wu and Mu - swung carved and patterned cast-iron and bronze lanterns of incense and spoke in old Korean dialect. They murmured prayers and blessings and anicent poems to the dead man's remains.   
"It's ok, _doengsang_." Wonwoo whispered to Bo Hyuk as the younger brother of the Jeon family began to lose control, and his eyes grew wet at the sight of his Father laying lifeless in a spheric shape indent carved into the stone, no more than three inches deep and seven feet wide all around. They knelt directly before their Father's body, with the other funeral guests had knelt in a half-moon around the screens and the candles that decorated the temple's interior. With the sunrise burning the sky apart in colours of orange, red, hot pink, and blinding white light, it was beautiful as it rained simultaneously. The light and the shadows in various depths was like a soundtrack to the emotional gravity of the temple around them. Chae-Seon looked around to see the room solemn and as teary as she was. It fulfilled something inside her; the belief in what she and her husband had had, and what they had created together.

  
The whole temple watched the priests in awe as they worked; black lines and jagged diamonds and uneven squares had been drawn in black kohl on Jeon's face, along with lines on his chin. The in-cut on the floor where Jeon's body lay was usually covered by specially-cut wooden board, but, today, it was different. 

  
_On too many levels, it is sick and out of this world_, Li thought. _But it is fascinating. This sending-off is unreal. That's my best mate down there. Even though it is what Jeon wanted, and all of it had comes from the stuff Chae-Seon grew up with and her family - it's horrific_

  
"It's just a body, Bo Hyuk. It's not the person you loved." Chae-Seon rubbed her son's back supportfully. Dido drove A-Yeong, Wonwoo, the twin's Mother and their Grandmother home while Bo Hyuk was excused from chauffer duties for the girls, getting into the back of the 2007 model Jaguar of his Mother with her, Jihoon, Elizabeth andVictoria, driven by Li. It wasn't even ten 'o' clock yet.

  
\----------------------------------------------

  
"Morning, honey." Wonwoo smiled, walking towards A-Yeong as she spoke and waved. She was wearing a long black lace dress, 1950's French style; she was sitting on the remaining stump of a cut-down tree by the banks of the river and across that the rice fields, her hands in her lap. Despite her been thirty-five years his senior, Wonwoo appreciated her presence immensely. "You've liked coming down to the river since you were a little boy." She smiled too.

  
"I know." Wonwoo replied. "I liked the float in the water, down a couple hundred meters. The current flowed a lot gentler; you could still feel a pull, but even when you're young you can swim through it. It's not lethal. Dad encouraged me to swim. I never saw him do it but I think he liked it."

  
"Jeon liked swimming. He used to class taking your Mum to the swimming pool or out to a lake or river like this as a date. Get her hair wet while she's in her undies; no money spent at all."

  
"I didn't know that." Wonwoo said.

  
A-Yeong laughed. "It's true. He was a man of nature and met a daughter of nature in your lovely Mum. It kept them happy; that was his main concern. Your Mum been happy with her life and been happy with her life with him." 

  
"So...who hates Li most right now?" Wonwoo asked.

  
"I don't hate Li. It's just with the woman been Jihoon's old baby-sitter and my old friend...if it was anyone else." She sighed. "I thought if he did cheat it would be Suri. The new manager at the Pentrose? The young model. The mid-life crisis woman. Your Mum said it was like "the Kia" screwing the help. She also said instead it was Li fucking the old Hyundai in the back of the garage."

  
Wonwoo thought his Mother could have used a bit more tact after A-Yeong's tears had been mopped up. But, then again, maybe not.

  
"He went to her, and kept going to her. So what does that make me?" A-Yeong asked. "The past?" She picked up a Acorn tree leaf from the ground, and admired it. "Nearly thirty years of marriage...all the past."

  
"He hasn't been able to tell you because you won't see him." Wonwoo said. 

  
"Li? About what?" A-Yeong remarked.

  
"Jihoon said that Li ditched her. The woman. Told her it was all a huge mistake and that everything is over. He wants his wife. He wants you, A-Yeong."  
"He said that?" A-Yeong replied, her eyes widening.

  
"Li begged her to persuade you to came him back. Right before Dad died. The night after the girls' birthday party she came in - about eleven o' clock at night - and asked Suri for Mum, and for you. Suri was just going to go home, and I was getting balloons out of the lobby. They had all deflated and were a mess."

  
"Why are you telling me this?" A-Yeong asked.

  
"Because it's the truth. You need to hear it somehow because the man who needs to tell it to you - you won't let him in. All of us - Mum, Bo Hyuk, Grandmother - we're all a mess right now. Fucked-up. We can't think, we can't feel properly. It's a massive problem and a big mess. It's just how it is right now; Mum wants you to be ok, I want you to be ok, Dad would want you to be ok. Happy." Wonwoo explained, looking out into the distance at the scenery. He still had a speech to give during the dinner service later on, as did Li. "The feast isn't until eight 'o' clock, by the way. I don't know if Mum said."

  
\--------------------------------------------

  
"Thank you for coming." Joshua glanced gratefully at Jeonghan in the second back seat as Dido drove along the sweeping, winding roads slick wet with rain and early morning black ice. "And thank you for picking us up, Dido."

  
"No worries." Dido replied, changing gears in the Land-Rover. "You two came all the way from Seoul? Long way for two kids." Dido added. Jeonghan's expression suddenly changed, but Joshua tapped his heel against Jeonghan's foot, indictating for him to relax.

  
"How is everyone?" Joshua asked.

  
"Holding up the best they can." Dido said. "Mrs Jeon is doing the best she can for the kids and for the benefit of everyone." Dido smiled in the revision mirror, a set of white teeth appearing admist his black beard. "You two were at Elizabeth and Victoria's party."

  
"Yeah." Joshua confirmed. "I'm a friend of Wonwoo's and Jeonghan's one of mine."

  
"You two are little shits." Dido chuckled warmly, nothing but kindness about him as Jeonghan jerked a finger towards Dido's direction behind the empty front passenger seat. _What the fuck_? Jeonghan mouthed. Joshua couldn't do nothing but ignore him and make conversation with Dido as the subject grew deeper and the older man began to explain what had happened earlier that morning, and what was happening for the rest of the day.

  
Joshua stood up straight and walked to Wonwoo in the lobby of the Pentrose like he was a friend he was greeting, instead of a two-years-long lover. With the manager behind the desk with receptionists, funeral guests sitting and socializing in the lobby as Dido with his blakc-button eyes trained on he and Jeonghan, Joshua made sure to shield his gaze. He would rather people be under the preception that he and Jeonghan were a gay couple rather than himself and the son of the recently deceased. All hell would break loose over that.

  
"I'm so sorry." Both of them said to each other, giving each other a few moments long embrace, utterly platonic instead of one made of the initimacy that burned low deep inside them. Jeonghan hung around in the background, flawless and effortlessly blending in excpet for his blonde hair. Wonwoo nodded his head over to him and came over to greet him as well. As soon as it took place, Joshua saw Dido leave back through the entrance of the Pentrose's lobby.

  
All three men walked together through the hotel upstairs to the second floor to what were tea-rooms that were empty of people entirely except for Jihoon and a golden retriever who was having his stomach patted by Jihoon.

  
"Are you shitting yourself about giving a speech?" Jeonghan asked Wonwoo as he and Joshua curled up neatly on the couch opposite Jihoon; Wonwoo sat down on one side of the couch, resting his head against his hand with his arm leaning on the arm of the couch, while Joshua sat by his side, leaning into him, with his legs crossed and Wonwoo's arm curving around Joshua's back. Jeonghan sat beside Jihoon, and suddenly had the golden retreivers head in-between his legs.

  
"You shouldn't have to do it." Jihoon muttered, his expression filthy. "It's bad enough my stupid Father is doing it; at least you wrote words down beforehand. He probably will say any old shit that comes out of his head and embarrass everyone."

  
"Another body for the grave." Jeonghan remarked. Jihoon smiled a bit, but it was kinder than his previous expression, having got his repsonse to his Father's duty off of his chest.

  
"Are you a smoker?" Wonwoo asked Jeonghan. Jeonghan shook his head, surprised. "You look like a smoker."

  
"He's not that bad looking." Joshua appealed to Wonwoo; Jihoon laughed.

  
"I don't mean that, just the way your hands move and how you sit and how you talk and look while you talk." Wonwoo explained. "Smoker."

  
"If I'm so well suited I'll take it up." Jeonghan replied, smiling in a way that wasn't quite a smile. "How are you doing? Really?"

  
"I'm uncomfortable." Wonwoo eventually spoke after several long moments where all of them thought he wouldn't reply. "All the attention, all of the people. They say about sitting the shit-pot, well, now electric egg-beaters have been put into it and the shit is spread everywhere under our feet and we're trying not to slip in it."  
"Fuck, that was graceful." Jihoon declared after a brief silence. All of them laughed, even Wonwoo.

  
"Want to show me around and give these two some privacy?" Jeonghan put to Jihoon. They left sooner after, taking the golden retriever with them who apparently was a pet of the head house-maid.

  
"We've got so much to talk about." Joshua said. "I don't mean about your Dad - we don't have to talk about that if you don't want to - I just mean in general. I've missed you so much."

  
"Just kiss me?" Wonwoo asked.


	7. Banquet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua makes interesting "relax and don't fuck up" propositions to Wonwoo, Jeonghan produces prescription pills as Chae-Seon guides service and Li gets drunk and ruins the funeral

The sunset had cued time for the banquet to begin. but Wonwoo knew he would barely be able to stomach anything even though his Mother, the restaurant staff, and Li - instead of his son, Jihoon, retired for the day from his apprenticeship - cooked in his Father's honour. Of all the people that had come to his Father's funeral...most of them had been happy to kneel in the temple and witness the wonderment and the tradition of a shintoist funeral. They were more than happy to come to the banquet. But only Li, A-Yeong and Chae-Seon would attend the burial service with the Wu and Mu. No one else bar those three could handle what exactly the burial service was.

  
_How the fuck can I tell him all of this_? Wonwoo thought about Joshua, and the thought itself crippling all of his internal resolve. _I'll never be able to tell him about the burial service, or the funeral service. Not that he could have come to that or that he did, but thank God. Nothing again is ever going to be simple. It's like Dad tried to inflict more grief upon us by his fantasies of being...of going away like a king. Wonwoo looked up to the sky, laughing to himself incredulously. Yeah, and it's raining again like mist. Can this day get any worse? Dad goes away and my partner might just die from aniphylatix covered in red blotches; death by water_

  
"Ok?" A-Yeong asked Chae-Seon.

  
"I'm fine." She replied as they walked out into the courtyard where they held Elizabeth and Victoria's birthday party only a few days before. Marquee's pure and white and illuminous in the moonlight and the lantern light that had been lit half hour ago, the funeral guests sat at their tables with their wine and spirits. Chae-Seon had requested that they bring a change of clothes with them, evening attire. Lit candles and fresh flowers decorated the tables, with the food beginning to be served. Chae-Seon knew she and her children would have been sickened at the side at a hundred people in black eating her food. The rush was over, the chaos was over. The kitchen staff had been employed for the funeral night to cook, and cook they had. Chae-Seon had worked mechanically for a solid ten hours in the kitchen, cooking and cooking and cooking. Sauces and broths and soups; grilling meat and roasting it and slow-cooking it in a temperature controlled oven. Writers talked over chefs creating their food with love; Chae-Seon mused their was so much emotion and effort in this food tonight that it might poison everyone who ate a bite of it. 

  
"No, no, like - I can't do it." Wonwoo's throat went dry as he walked into the head marquee with Joshua by his side. Suddenly, Jeonghan's head of wavy white-blonde curtain hair appeared. Wonwoo found himself looking down at a bottle of pills in Jeonghan's hand. Joshua moved as to conceal them from any prying eyes. 

  
"No, definitely not - what are they?" Wonwoo hissed.

  
"Trust me. Take one with a glass of wine and you'll be fine." Jeonghan implored.

  
"No." Wonwoo said again. Jeonghan slipped the bottle back in the pocket of his trousers, and Joshua tugged on Wonwoo's sleeve.  
"I love you." He said. "It's simple. Just imagine everyone naked."

  
"I'm at my family's hotel." Wonwoo shook his head, panicking.

  
"Especially at this place." Jeonghan commented, looking around at his surroundings.

  
"Think it funny; imagine your Dad sitting there having a laugh." Joshua gestured for Wonwoo to come closer to him. "Imagine me naked." Joshua whispered. Wonwoo turned but only to see Jeonghan had slipped away silently. Even though he knew Joshua and Jeonghan were close, it mortified Wonwoo to think that Jeonghan would hear that. No you wouldn't usually, it's just your nerves, he thought to himself.

  
"Stark naked, hard for you, calling your name." Joshua whispered, before slipping away into the crowd, looking for a seat.

  
_First course. That's what Li said. We do our speeches after the first course_, Wonwoo thought.

  
Wonwoo looked over as his Grandmother tapped a spoon against a empty wine glass for silence. He stood, and pulled his speech from the inside of his jacket. When he had written this speech, he had accounted for words from his brother, Dido, his Aunt, as well as his Mother. He caught Joshua's eyes - warm and bright and supporting - and he began to speak. He knew the first part would have people in hysterics; that was solely his Mother's words.

  
"My Father was many things." Wonwoo began. "He was seven different men in one. To my Mother he was a liar, a serial tax-evader, a arrogant, self-centered bastard who was -" He broke off as predictably the one hundred guests began to piss themselves laughing, even though the laughter was mildly appalled. "Absolutely adored by her for he absolutely adored her. As well as these qualities, he was the most talented businessman and entrepreneur this country divided has ever seen in it's history. Few have created as much delightful shit as my Father." Wonwoo smiled down at his Mother as the guests laughed again. Her eyes twinkled warmly; tonight, there were no tears. "To my brother Bo Hyuk and I he was wonderful; he supported us when we didn't want to go to school or eat steamed vegetables. He said it was perfectly adequate for everyone to have Bo Hyuk and I taught literature and history by Dido, our head gardener -" A soft applause went up for Dido. "Mathematics and science taught by Li A-Yeong -" A applause went up for A-Yeong, who blushed attractively. "And Dad said he himself could teach us how to be scheming, financially malicious, successful bastards, and Mum could teach us to have many shortcomings, the most endearing one for us to inherit been hypocrisy. For example, evade tax bills but be appalled at the thought of someone laundering money."   
Wonwoo had to briefly sit down, laughing himself. Even his Grandmother was laughing; tears shone in her eyes, and Wonwoo was amazed to see that for a few moments she let herself be comforted by Suri the Pentrose's new manager who was sitting next to her. 

  
"My Dad has hurt us greatly by leaving. The pain is immeasurable, and the thought of how long it be with us is terrifying in itself. Only a few minutes ago I was convinced I wouldn't be able to do this speech." Wonwoo averted away from the text he had written the previous night, and talked to the room naturally. His vision flickered as he tried to imagine Joshua as wrecked as he had requested, by Wonwoo couldn't. He realized he didn't need too, because his Mother had taken care of that. In reality, in the speech, he had virtually shitted on his Father's memory; absolutely taken the piss out of him. But the sadness and the grief had been cut in half by a knife with this sudden euphoria of memory of his father. "I was even told to just imagine everyone naked I was so nervous." Wonwoo saw Jeonghan flick his eyebrows up.

Wonwoo got back to his written speech. "He was a man who could love; he counted taking my Mother swimming in her underwear and getting her perfectly styled hair soaking wet as a date." Wonwoo chuckled as his Mother grinned broadly and winked over at A-Yeong, whose hands shot up in a double thumbs-up. "He would take my brother and I fishing to get produce for the restaurant on sundays, and always have my best friend, Li Jihoon, now my Mother's apprentice, come with us as well. When my Grandfather died, Dad was the first person to ring Grandmother and congratulate her on his death." Wonwoo covered his mouth as he laugh. "And, the saddest thing is...he's not going to waltz through the tea-rooms again at midnight with Mum because she has just finished cleaning up the kitchen after service and he wants to have fun with her. We won't ever bump into him down the street buying cigarettes and pretending that they are for Dido. Dad was...." Wonwoo broke off. As the shame spread through his body like wildfire, every guest - including Jeonghan and Joshua - stood up and gave him a standing ovation.

  
As the applause died, Li stood up, and presented his speech. The older man looked much more nervous to the point of agitation. His mouth opened silently as he looked down at the paper in his hands. Wonwoo saw the happy expressions on Jihoon and A-Yeong's faces fall drastically, and Wonwoo knew there was something really wrong.  
"Jeon - Jeon..." Li stuttered. He took a breath and started again. "Look, there's really no point me doing this." He said blatantly. "Wonwoo here summed it all up. Jeon was an arsehole but he was a brilliant Father and Husband and he was a bit of a fucking idiot but we got on well together -" Li fell short, slumping back into his seat, the speech falling forgotten to the ground. "Fuck off all of you." He declared.

With a crash, Wonwoo and Bo Hyuk's Grandmother rose to her feet, in a dark red wrap-waist dress with a sweetheart neckline. The ruby necklace they had given her for Christmas last year hung around her throat, and her silver hair was styled in a beautiful 1960's bob around her jaw-line. She looked formidable, thunderous and graceful and every inch the sort of woman that dead man that came to pay their respects too was born of. And Li in the space of a few heartbeats had seriously pissed her off.

  
"No mother should bury her son." The old lady spoke, her eyes rich and soulful and wet, but her tone was solid, and giving signs of her age. Her voice was distinctly old, but it wasn't weak. "The very thought is an affront to decency, against God -" She looked up at the ceiling of the marquee above their heads. "Jeon was my only child. I loved him very much. And, my eldest grandchild Wonwoo is right. He was many things. All of you here tonight knew my son; and some of you loved him too."

  
Wonwoo looked at his brother who downed a glass of white wine in a few desperate gulps. Are you ok? he mouthed. Bo Hyuk just stared at him, before casting his gaze back to their Grandmother.

  
"But I am the one who held him in my arms when he was first born. And it was I who held his hand as he crossed his first busy street, and it was I who let him weep on my shoulder when his foolish sixteen year old heart was broken by this woman here." The silence in the Marquee was deadly as the old woman looked down at Chae-Seon. "All of that was mine and mine alone. Some believe that age diminishes those feelings...I stand here to tell you - it doesn't." 

  
Jeonghan murmured "Oh, God" to Joshua as the last two words from the old ladies mouth spelt out the vulnerability and the humanity from the her being.

  
"Thank you." She smiled softly and took her seat. Joshua quickly ran a thumb under his eye; for the truth and the mockery Wonwoo's speech had spelt out, his Grandmother's was heartbreaking. He saw Wonwoo's Mother's tears openly slip down her face as she just sat there, detached and numb as people slowly took to drinking their alcohol and eating their main courses which were brought out by the waiters and waitresses.


	8. Burial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua and Wonwoo's relationship takes a turn as Joshua makes a promise, Bo Hyuk gets in a punch-up with the village Council elected, Jeon's body is formally buried, Jeonghan shows Wonwoo some of his dark side, and Joshua tells Wonwoo he will come to live at the Pentrose

It took four boats as tempers evolved, minds changed drastically, and decisions came into effect. Dido and three of his most trusted workers were in one boat with Jeon's cold body carefully wrapped. It was held and supported by the three workers as Dido steered the boat into the centre of the lake. The Wu steered the second boat that held the Mu, Chae-Seon, Wonwoo, Bo Hyuk and their Grandmother. Elizabeth and Victoria came in the third boat with their Mother, Li, Jihoon and A-Yeong.

  
_"You're scared." Joshua had held Wonwoo's face as the man explained to him what the nightime burial truly was. "That's all it is. Com here." Joshua wrapped his arms around him. "Be brave. For Bo Hyuk as well; he must be just as scared as you are, and more. Why don't you talk to each other?"_

  
"I can't believe we're doing this to him." Bo Hyuk said. "This is insane. What if he floats to the surface one day half rotten?"

  
"Oh God, don't." Their Grandmother bowed her head, pressing her fingertips to her temples.

  
"Jeon Family." The Wu and Mu adressed them, holding lanterns aloft in front of them as they sat in the boats. The Mu began to sing a slow and gospel-melodic prayer in quite tones as they all lit their candles in their lanterns and holding them aloft also, shining lamplight onto the dark water and into the dark night as Dido - Shintoist runes drawn on his face and bare chest, torso, back and shoulders - began to lower Jeon's body, weighed down by thirty kilograms of lead - into the water with the assitance of the Wu, Li, and the three workers of the Pentrose estate. Jeon's body covered and wrapped securely and completely was suspended between the three boats using leather straps that were let go to sink down with Jeon's body to the floor of the lake as his body touched the surface of the water. Wonwoo held onto Bo Hyuk tightly as the boy openly cried at the sight, and the little energy Wonwoo had was drained from him. The sound of the Mu's voice reminded Wonwoo of Billie Eilish and with haunting symphonies, and he wondered what it was like down there in the dark water where it was cold and blind to humans.

  
_Dad was a man who has never been underwater_, Wonwoo thought. _Why does he wish to spend eternity there?_

\--------------------------------------------

Tea and coffee and soft alcohol blends like lemon, lime and bitters and cocoa mixed with warmed whiskey were being served with biscuits, cake and slices to the guests as they arrived back at the Pentrose, for the third time that day. It was all about the hotel; it was on show and given as much attention as the deceased had been. The party had been moved into the ball-room as the night came in fully.

  
Joshua had disappeared off somewhere, and it embittered Wonwoo that he wasn't around.

  
"You need to lighten up. You're a rich man, baby." Jeonghan said to Wonwoo, leaning against one set of the folded back french doors that went out into the courtyard from the dining hall of the restaurant. He held Joshua's umbrella rolled up in his hands. He told Wonwoo that Joshua somewhere inside in the ball-room next door, talking to Wonwoo's mother.

  
"I don't care about my families money or their land." Wonwoo said, swallowing heavily.

  
"Funny, that's what all the rich kids say." Jeonghan replied.

  
"You really think you're smart, don't you?" Wonwoo remarked, taking a gulp from his red wine. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

  
"Look, hell of a turnout." Jeonghan said of the funeral. Nearly all the people that had been at Kwak Victoria and Elizabeth's brithday party plus more had came to Jeon the Senior's funeral. "You know why, right? Full bellies and full wallets. They all loved your Father and your Mother because she and he made them rich. They all did." Jeonghan and Wonwoo looked around as traditional Korean music began to play, with a background of accoustic guitar.

  
"If the rumors are true, then we have a problem." Joshua frowned as Wonwoo's Mother gave him a glance as the head counciller of the village - a tall, wrinkled man with a close-shaven beard and thick, curling grey hair - leaned over her, pressing into her body, to grab a piece of pork off the wooden serving board behind her. The spoils of what had been left of the suckling pig, gutted and deboned, before being roasted for seven hours. When it had been brought out to the dining hall, it had looked macabre, and absolutely astonishing. Joshua had never been present at such awe and respect given for a woman at that precise moment when Wonwoo's Mother appeared in her black dress, following the two young waiters who carried the wooden plank on their shoulders. An unstoppable force in a size 16, 164 centimeter body.

  
"This hotel, it's a big part of the community." The man gestured about as people danced to the music; business-men, single women who were friends of Wonwoo's Mother and her former sister-in-law, parents with children, couples, newly-weds and matrimonial unions decades old. "What I'm saying is we must not let a personal tragedy mushroom into an economic one." The man bit into the pork. Wonwoo's Mother looked away, completely unimpressed, holding her glass of wine. "Don't you think?"

  
"I think you are a disgusting little man with a very tiny penis." She remarked softly but not without an edge, smiling wearily at Joshua as she made her way out of the dining hall.  
"It's just the grief talking." The man said to a couple beside them, a man just like himself with a cosmetically-altered wife.

  
"Sure." Joshua murmured to himself.

\---------------------------------------------

Bo Hyuk sat silently down in the kitchen of the Pentrose, looking at photographs he had taken with his girlfriend in Tokyo. How happy he had been, with her. His father had been alive. He had never even thought he would get that news.

  
"You know what she's like. I don't I don't feel sorry for her -"

  
"You're pissed, Brian. You're the head of the council, you can't be mouthing off like this."

  
Bo Hyuk twisted his head around, listening to the conversation of the village council elected.

  
The sound of liquid sloshing reached his ears as the counciller began to speak again. "Chae-Seon's never fitted in with what I like to call the real community. I don't think she's a gold-digger - she's too rich to have to be - but I guarantee you the bitch will fuck all of us over - the tourism, the hotel that gets used for the hikers, the cottages that are adverstised for travelers - everything. That bitch will fuck us -"

  
"Are you talking about my Mother?" Bo Hyuk inquired, sitting up from behind the bench, smashing his fist down on the bench.

  
"No, he's not, mate, he's talking complete shit." The second counciller pulled the head of Council by his arm, but the taller and stronger man glared at Bo Hyuk and refused to move. "Let's get you home."

  
"No, you don't. Not until he apologises." Bo Hyuk said. Not having to look where his hand went, he neatly plucked a meat cleaver blade thar hung from a rack above the bench, and angled it smoothly towards the older man. He was electrified and un-hinged; an hour ago he had watched his Father's body lowered to the bottom of the lake. That was enough for anyone.

  
"I respect your grief young man, but I've got the right to an opinion." The man groaned and gasped as Bo Hyuk hit his face with the dull, thicker edge of the knife, spitting on him simultaneously. Undeterred by Bo Hyuk's knife, the counciller swung a punch directly at the boy's throat, making him choke violently, his eyes rolling into the back of his head and sinking to the ground.

  
"For Christ's sake, stop it!" The man's colleague yelled, attempting to pull him off of Bo Hyuk.

  
"Enough." Bo Hyuk wrapped his hand through the counciller's belt, and put the cleaver to his crotch, cutting the fabric of his trousers. It was enough for both men to pull back warily. "Now fuck off."

_\-----------------------------------------------------_

"You know I'm fine, right?" Wonwoo said to Jihoon as Jihoon opened his mouth to speak. Wonwoo was cold by the open doors, but he didn't want to move. In a way, he didn't want this night to be over. In another way, it seemed to have been an eternity since the dawn broke. He was so tired, but he was overtired. He couldn't sleep even if he tried.

  
"Josh isn't." Jihoon said. "He's really worried about you. You and he need to go home or go upstairs to one of the rooms upstairs. You two need it."

  
"When did you become a great observer of human crap?" Wonwoo asked.

  
"While I'm more sober than you are and in a far better state."

  
"Your state isn't that good."

  
"It's good enough." Jihoon ended it. "Joshua!" Jihoon called out. Wonwoo exhaled tiredly, and sunk down onto the ground, resting his head on the concrete in the doorway of the French doors. The cold air was soothing, but he felt misty rain falling onto his forehead, eyes, and hair.

  
"Don't come near me, I'm wet, you'll get hurt." Wonwoo said as he heard footsteps.

"I don't care if you hurt me." Joshua said. "But can you not shut me out like this? It's alright but you're lying in the doorway in the cold."

  
"I really think I'm going to lose it." Wonwoo replied.

"Well, you're going to lose me this time, then."

  
Wonwoo sat up roughly, looking at Joshua. With the moonlight and the luminescence from the outdoor lights and the hustle and bustle of the funeral guests still in the Hotel and the music that played, Joshua looked ethereal. Wonwoo drank in the sight of him numbly as everything else in him screamed.

  
"Remember when we'd go out driving and I'd play you songs you were into on my guitar?" Joshua crouched down in front of Wonwoo. "Do you remember in Seoul that day and a tree branch fell in the wind and nearly hit you and all the two of us could do was laugh? You kept saying you've grown up with trees and land all of your life and the one day you're in a disgusting city you nearly get hit. Do you remember when you broke your leg down by the rice field and Dido had to come and pick us up on his quadbike? I was sitting on the back and he had to load you into a trailer?" Joshua's eyes glowed in the darkness as Wonwoo laughed. It had been agony everytime the trailer's wheels collapsed through a rabbit hole or uneven ground as Dido rode at thirty-five kilometers and hour along the land.

  
"So, what's the past for? I'll need it if love we last anymore." Joshua said. He touched Wonwoo's hands; her felt the burn of water-drops against his hands, but he didn't wince. It was a sting, but not a pain he had had to endure before. Not like the pain he had had when he was soaked the first time he and Wonwoo had sex in the hut down by the lake. "You can have all the time you want and need, Wonu. You can't see right now but I'm going to stay. I'm going to come and live here with you." Joshua moved onto his knees in-between Wonwoo's legs. "I'm going to stay if you'll have me?" 


	9. Final Will & Testment // Kissing People You Know You Shouldn't Have

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Final Will and Testment of Jeon's is read causing greater shock-waves, and Wonwoo kisses someone he shouldn't have

"This is the last Will and Testmant of Jeon." The solicitor looked across the dining hall table that he, A-Yeong and Chae-Seon were sat at as Chae-Seon poured herself a cup of tea and grabbed one of the biscuits off the plate she had laid out for the Solicitor that he had not touched. "I have confirmed that the will is legal and final. It states that Chae-Seon and her children Jeon Wonwoo and Jeon Bo Hyuk iare the main beneficiaries of the Estate, Chae-Seon granted a larger share than Wonwoo, Wonwoo granted a larger share than Bo Hyuk - when Bo Hyuk inherits his share when he turns twenty-one years old. I had consolidated all the figures and found the task was rather complex as there were certain types of irregularities in the accounts."

  
"What type of irregularities?" A-Yeong asked, clasping and un-clasping her hands as Chae-Seon listened, munching on a white chocolate chip biscuit. "Well..." The Solicitor hesitated. "While the various companies and trusts seemed healthy on the surface on closer inspection certain significant losses and outstanding debts have been concealed."  
Chae-Seon began to really pay attention, placing her biscuit down on her plate. "In short," The solicitor continued. "There is no estate. All there are is debts. Substantial ones."  
Chae-Seon and A-Yeong gazed at the solicitor breathlessly, before they both individually deflated.

\-----------------------------------------------------

Wonwoo crushed damp stale breadcrumbs, mealworms, and fire ash into a ball in his hand before throwing it into the river. The ultra fish food. He had come out fishing to clear his head. He didn't really count fishing as a personal past-time, but it was something his Father had done for the love of he, Bo Hyuk, and even Jihoon.

  
"Hi." Wonwoo looked up to see Jeonghan walking down through the thick forest at the edge of the Pentrose's land until he was a couple of feet away from Wonwoo.

  
"Uh, hi." Wonwoo threw more of the home-made fish food into the river, before turning back to his partner's best friend. "How are you?"

  
"That's not some of your Dad is it?" Jeonghan pointed down to the empty ice cream tub full of ash.

  
Wonwoo laughed. "Oh, no, Jesus Christ, no. We used to do this. Every Sunday. At least, until the business went ultra crazy. Look, we can talk about fish or we can talk about nothing."

  
Jeonghan grinned slowly, lazily. 

  
"So I chose fish." Wonwoo added.

  
Jeonghan wrapped the cardigan he was wearing over his shirt and jeans around his body tighter over his jeans and shirt. "You're using mysterious human ashes as bait." He smiled wider.

  
"Yeah." Wonwoo scruffed up the hair at the back of his head. "Well, he made millions feeding fish to people - I want to keep up the tradition."

  
"So, what do we do?" Jeonghan asked, approaching Wonwoo at the river edge closer. "Just scatter?"

  
"Half a disposable barbeque?" Wonwoo remarked. "Yeah..." He leant down and picked up his fishing rod as he swore it twitch, a fish on the end of the line.

  
"Oh, you've got one!" Jeonghan said.

  
"Yeah, yeah, grab the net." Wonwoo replied quickly. 

  
"No, no, just pull it -" Jeonghan wtapped his arms around Wonwoo and the rod, his head by Wonwoo's over his shoulder.

  
"It's fine, just grab the net -" Wonwoo turned his head to try and look at Jeonghan, and instead got a lungful of Jeonghan's scent that was so pure and attractive that it short-circuted a part of his brain.

  
"Your not doing it right, pull it harder you wimp!" Jeonghan groaned, pulling at Wonwoo's body weight and rod. He gasped out a swear-word as they saw the fish flop across the surface of the water as it jumped when Wonwoo spun the reel of the rod inwards towards the bank.

  
"That's not right -" Wonwoo protested.

  
"Come on -" Jeonghan's leg slipped in-between the centre of Wonwoo's thighs.

  
"No, listen to me, grab the net!" Wonwoo shouted.

  
Wonwoo and Jeonghan laughed crazily as they stumbled backwards, Wonwoo over-balancing as Jeonghan pulled at him and the rod. They fell together back onto the ground, leaves and forest mulch and loose dirt beneath them.

  
"Ow..." Jeonghan touched the back of his head gingerly as Wonwoo told him off in-between gulped lungfuls of air. "You pulled too hard." Jeonghan replied, asserting the blame to Wonwoo which made him laugh again. 

  
"I told you to get the net!" Wonwoo looked down, still laughing, as one of Jeonghan's legs rested slightly on the top of his as they lay closely on the ground together. Wonwoo's head fell to one side and he gazed at Jeonghan as the older man giggled a bit more, his hands resting on top of his stomach. Jeonghan's closed eyes opened up, and he looked at Wonwoo gazing at him.

  
His eyes remained open as Wonwoo leaned over on his side and pressed his mouth across Jeonghan's in a kiss. The moment he pulled back, the two men gazed at one another.  
"Oh shit." Wonwoo said as Jeonghan swallowed. "Sorry - um - sorry." A second later he was getting up from the ground and running away from Jeonghan through the forest, leaving the blonde on the ground staring up at the canopy of the forest above his body.

\------------------------------------------

"However, there is a silver lining, if only a small one." The Solicitor spoke again. "It seems as a tax avoidance stratedgy before he came of age - eighteen, not inheriting age of twenty one as the will states - the Pentrose and lands were put in Wonwoo's name. Which at this point in time is six years ago. As such...it is not part of the estate. Congratulations, Mrs Jeon, to your son Wonwoo. He is now the owner of this hotel. In fact, he has done for quite a substanital time." The Solicitor pushed the paperwork across the table to Chae-Seon, whose mouth was slowly curving up in a horrified grin as A-Yeong just stared again in utter shock at the Solicitor.

  
"I'm afraid in situations like these it is my duty to inform the authorities of such irregularities." The Solicitor told A-Yeong as Chae-Seon read the paperwork. "I imagine they will want to talk to you about this Mrs Li, you been heavily involved in the management and financial management of the Pentrose. Even though the deceased Mr Jeon was the entrepreneur of this estate, Mrs Jeon was his wife. Everything he had was hers, until death. In fact the arrangement is that Mrs Jeon's money and family investment in the late 1970's and early 1980's was the Pentrose, until the deceased and Mrs Jeon made enough money themselves to buy out Mrs Jeon's maiden family. From that point, Mrs Jeon has run the kitchen, but in actual fact has simply been the wife of the entrepreneur while you Mrs Li were an investor but also a company and business director rather than employee, for the work you do within the hotel. The same goes for your husband. He is your husband, but that is only so. He works in the kitchen and is not classed as an employee because he is your husband."

  
"But I don't know anything!" A-Yeong said, her voice going higher in her emotion. She pressed her hand over her mouth. "Oh my Goodness..."

  
"Don't worry, my love, we can fix this." Chae-Seon said. "I am more like my husband than anyone else he ever knew. We can work this out."

\------------------------------------------------

Jeonghan sat up slowly, his head spinning and his mouth on fire from where Wonwoo kissed him. He hated the sound of the forest with it's chirping birds and natural serenity - the silence of it - but it was overwhelmed by all that had happened. His best friend's boyfriend had just kissed him, and it felt absolutely incredible. Jeonghan hugged his knees to his chest, and rested his chin on them, wrapping his arms around his legs. He couldn't but but smile, and smiled out over the river and the landscape of the forest.


	10. The Boss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jihoon leaves home, Dido and Joshua deal with harassing real estate agents when Joshua moves into the house Wonwoo has given him on the Pentrose Estate while Jeon Senior's voice still lingers from beyond the grave as he watches over his family and their friends

"You never forget where you got married." Jeon said, walking down the granite stone steps from the front courtyard where all the drama in the world happened; birthdays, funeral banquets. He remembered when Chae-Seon stood there by themselves on what had been hard, thick bare farm-land covered in wildgrasses and weeds. It had been the Winter, and he had been married to Chae-Seon for a month. They were nineteen years old.

She had grinned at him, calling him over into her arms for a kiss, her wedding ring shining brightly in the overcast sunlight on her hand. His parents and her parents had been there as well, his family seeing the land her family had brought the newlyweds, all four hundred acres. It had been magical, and was unforgettable, just as what they had made together.

"Which means are hundreds of people will never forget the Pentrose. it brought them together for one special day, and it made them happy. I was one of those people myself. I fell utterly, hopelessly in love. And it was for the first time." Jeon looked around as 1980's rock music began to play, and he saw A-Yeong and his wife dancing together like teenagers in the dining hall through the open french doors.

Chae-Seon was in a sleeveless navy dress that went down to her ankles, and A-Yeong was in a knee-length tweed skirt and a white voile blouse that was 1920's style and would have had a very expensive price tag. 

  
"I can never forget Chae-Seon, or A-Yeong either for that matter. I loved her too - she had great legs when she was younger. She still does now. A-Yeong and Li were as much a part of this place in its history as we were. I'm glad they never left and moved into the village when Jihoon grew up. I'm glad they're never going to leave, either."

  
"All this time and...I owned it." Wonwoo said to Joshua, his throat tight in his continued shock that had lasted for a decent week now as he drove him in the simple bone-coloured Citroen into the entrance of the Pentrose, outside the doors to the lobby. His Father hadn't been a big fan of cars that weren't Korean, but Wonwoo really liked that little Citroen his brother had learned to drive in.

  
"It's yours." Joshua grinned widely and happily. 

  
"Well, it's ours." Wonwoo said, climbing out of the car and pulling Joshua's suitcases out of the boot of the vehicle; the doormen rushed down to do their jobs as Joshua continued smiling happily up at the Pentrose.

  
"Amazing." Joshua smiled more at the beauty of the hotel. "Is that the man your Mother thinks is the michelin star guy?" Joshua nodded his head towards an obese English-man walking across the gardens over the side of the prick wall of the turn-around entrance to the Hotel. "The one with the appetite?"

  
"Ah, so none of your business." Wonwoo replied teasingly.

  
"Welcome home Mr Jeon." Suri walked down the staircase in a impeccable black Dior blouse and skirt. "And Mr Hong?" Suri tried Joshua's name, and smiled when she was found right by Joshua's wave.

  
"Thank you, Suri." Wonwoo walked into the Hotel with her.

\---------------------------------------------

"Wonwoo first brought me here to this exact spot," Joshua said, holding his phone up in the air, showing Jeonghan on facetime a view down the side of the Gyeongsan mountain from the East-North face of the Pentrose. "He said, "Look at that view", and then announced that he is now the owner of the Pentrose Hotel, Restaurant, and Vineyard. Everything is his." Joshua spun around in a circle, beaming widely.

  
"_Fuck_." Jeonghan replied. "What happened - shouldn't it go to his Mum?"

  
"You forget that South Korea is a partiarchal society where the first-born son takes pride or place in event of Dad dying. But, we went back inside, had sex, and told him I thought it was amazing." Joshua burst out laughing.

  
"That's so cool." Jeonghan managed, feeling indescribably weak.

  
"Yeah." Joshua gave him a thumbs-up.

  
"By the way, Mr Jeon -"

  
"Wonwoo, please, Suri. You're barely older than me." Wonwoo appealed to her, tucking his hands into his pockets. The lobby was as warm as toast, and for all their money, Wonwoo hated to think of what the electricity bill would be in another few weeks for the central heating. It was a month after his Father's funeral, and the middle of the Winter on the Mountain and its landscape was here, fully-fledged. 

  
"The wedding of a Mr Kim and a Miss Lau is booked for this weekend." Suri finished.

  
"Absolutely - all of us will honour all the bookings and reservations." Wonwoo confirmed. "We have been running this all of our lives. Mum in her kitchen with Li as her dogsbody, A-Yeong and you are still taking care of the intricasies of implementing entrepenurial product." He grinned. "But we're doing it Dad's way, and a bit my way."

  
Suri bowed. "You are the boss." Her eyes twinkled as she walked back behind the desk of the lobby, and Wonwoo let one of the maids walking past take his coat.

  
He looked around the lobby and meditated the task and the life now set for him. Wonwoo didn't feel remotely worthy of any of it. He felt he was constantly in an out-of-body experience. He wasn't going to break any promises, and he wasn't going to let anyone down.

A-Yeong and his Mother had put to him that with he as the official owner, they could run the hotel, vineyard, restaurant and other business officially, and slowly introduce Wonwoo in the thick realism of the world he had grown up in. Wonwoo had agreed to that, on the condition that Suri was a bit more involved so A-Yeong wouldn't collapse under the weight of the business of the Pentrose itself, and all the cottages and structures on the Estates were under his control; it was his decision to make about lease income, tenants, and guests staying in them. Within the space of a few sentences he had secured Joshua's new home on the Pentrose estate without having to tell his Mother, A-Yeong or Suri a thing, and have himself never obligated to tell them. "It belongs to all of us." Wonwoo had said. "Forty percent of the income from the restaurant goes into your personal bank account, Mum, but the remaining sixty percent stays in the Pentrose collectively, which is yours to share with the whole family. A-Yeong, Suri will recieve her wages as an employee, and continue been an employee. Suri answers to me but she answers to you secondly. You will recieve wages but not in the structure of an employee, but as being on the board of directors -" Wonwoo gestured around the kitchen table in A-Yeong's house, making her laugh. "That is a "30% increase on your wages."

But, first things came first; Mr Kim and Miss Lau's Wedding.

\----------------------------------------

"Four double bedrooms, a home office, commanding views out to the river and only a slight worry about flooding but only if it pisses down non-top for a week." Dido took Joshua through his new house, nearly five times the size of his apartment, completed with furniture and a lot of his own personal things placed exactly in the spots Joshua would have chosen when he had sent his possessions up to the Pentrose two weeks ago. _Wonwoo must have set everything up in its place_, Joshua thought. Dido grinned as Joshua nodded, slightly open mouthed.

  
"Large designer kitchen, fully equipped - ah." Dido stopped as he saw a real estate agents car pull up on the other side of the river. "This fuckhead doesn't know how to get across. Hang on, lad." Dido walked over to the kitchen sink and in the cupboards underneath was a megaphone. He opened the glass sliding doors in the adjoined kitchen and dining room, and roared into the megaphone.

  
"Bugger off you miserable piece of shit! This property is not in your hands anymore since the old man who owned it died. The dead man's son has decided on a tenant himself so get the fuck off your phone unless you want it recording the fascinating sounds of the inside of your arsehole!" Dido chucked Joshua the megaphone and closed the doors, laughing heartily to himself.

  
"Probably a bit mean to scare him like that - he's shitted himself, I bet you." Dido said, gripping Joshua's shoulder for a moment. 

  
"Two bathrooms plus an ensuite, as well. Everything was cleaned until it sparkled as you can see, and on the beds is all fresh linen and the toilet is smear free." Dido grinned.   
"Cheers." Joshua laughed; he pointed to the real estate agent who was jumping up and down, shaking his fist. He looked like a cartoon.

  
"Oh, wait up. These morons never learn." Dido shook his head, reaching for the megaphone.

  
"Do you mind if I do it?" Joshua asked hopefully. Dido shook his head, laughing. 

  
"Make sure to roar like you mean it."

  
Joshua opened the glass sliding doors, leaned out and yelled into the megaphone, "Get fucked you inbred cunt!" he shut the doors again, and doubled-over as he couldn't help but laugh.

\------------------------------------

Jihoon shook his head, before shoving at Wonwoo's chest, before pulling him into a tight hug. Jihoon stood on his toes so he could his arms around Wonwoo's neck, and Wonwoo bent down a bit to accomdate Jihoon's lack of height. Ethereal-aura English music sung by a deep Irish voice played on the radio in Wonwoo's Mother's house kitchen. It was empty except for his Grandmother cooking something in the oven, in a long marble-patterened jersey cardigan that floated as she moved and touched the ground when she stood still, a simply cut dark-green dress with a low neck on beneath. Wonwoo had spent an hour with her, and he appreciated her presence as Jihoon laughed a little bit, and on her old face a affectionate smile appeared.

  
"I can't believe that you're actually asking me if I want to move into Hogwarts here?" Jihoon stared, amazement making his mouth fall open. _That was a new nickname for the Pentrose_; Wonwoo noted. _Hogwarts_.

  
"It would only be upstairs-upstairs. The attic. If it doesn't make you feel like a family nutter locked in the attic cross with "The Addam's family"." Wonwoo added, watching Jihoon's expression.

  
"Let me put the stove on." Jihoon said. "Have you had some breakfast?"

  
"Is that a yes?" Wonwoo checked.

  
"Depends on what your Mum thinks - my Mum thinks. I'm leaving home." Jihoon practically ran over the fridge, and got an eyeful of whatever was in there.

  
"You're not really, you're just moving three quarters of a kilometer up the back lawn." The old lady commented, making both the young men laugh and chide her about the powers of unimpressed Mothers who have talents for interfering in the lives of their children.


	11. The Perfect Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeonghan and Wonwoo talk

"They can still see us, you know." Jeonghan said to Wonwoo, walking along the hills. Wonwoo raised his eyebrows. "These days the CIA can spot infidelity for forty thousand feet." Jeonghan had come up to visit Wonwoo, and when Wonwoo had volounteered to drive Jeonghan to the station, they had parked in a field a few kilometers up the road, and had got out the vehicle and had began to walk, suffocating in each other's presence in the confined space.

  
"Yeah, but are you sure it's really - that?" Wonwoo said.

  
"I googled it." Jeonghan took the piss in a dry tone. "Definitely immoral unless weirdly you live in France, Blegium, or the Netherlands. Frankly, you can fuck or kiss your boyfriend's mate in any of those countries."

  
"Ok, here, I'm been serious." Wonwoo said. "We kissed each other."

  
"You kissed me." He grinned partially. "Ok, we can just pretend nothing happened. Nobody knows, nobody saw us. There are no infidelity drones." Jeonghan walked in front of Wonwoo and stopped under the bare limbs of a Acorn tree. He put his hands in his pockets, his shoulders curving forward. "We can walk away."

  
"If that's what you want." Wonwoo said earnestly.

  
Jeonghan hesitated before talking. "Everyone knows Josh and I fucked up." he scoffed a laugh. "This will just be the icing on the cake."

  
"The boy killed by rain and the King of Infidelity and Sensual Past-Times." Joshua sighed. "Do you remember the day when Shua first brought me along for a look and the shit hit the roof when I slipped and brought down one of the doormen and knocked his teeth about?"

  
"Oh, yeah." Wonwoo laughed. "That made the village newspaper."

  
"Even with all the chaos that happened, Joshua rang his Mum back in America and he told her everything, and then I heard someone near us said, "Look at those two fags; the one who thinks he's Madonna with his hair and the retard with the brolley"."

  
Wonwoo looked down over the mountain and it's little in-cut valleys and rivers and lakes and rocky scenery, before looking back to Jeonghan.

  
"That was the end of the perfect day." Jeonghan looked down as Wonwoo walked forward and held his hand in his own, stroking his thumb along the back of Jeonghan's back, feeling the wamrth of his skin and fingers. Jeonghan turned away from him, his expression hidden.

  
"Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss." Jeonghan said. He walked a few feet, balancing as to not slip on the muddy ground. "It doesn't have to mean anything. It can just be forgotten."

  
"Yeah." Wonwoo nodded. "If that's what you want."

  
"It's what I want." jeonghan stuck the umbrella into the soft ground, gazing directly at him.

  
"Where are you going?" Wonwoo asked.

  
"Home to Seoul." Jeonghan called, not looking back as he walked away.


	12. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jihoon gets into a argument with the twin sister - Kwak Victoria - of the object for his care - Kwak Elizabeth. Wonwoo with Dido discovers a twenty year old surprise in the Pentrose's Greenhouses, Wonwoo makes a confession to Joshua that has disastrous prospects for their relationship, and A-Yeong gets paid a visit by the police, supervised by Grandmother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At first, I really was certain about not giving Jihoon a relationship to go with the context of his personality; but lack of relationship does not deny him romantic feelings, frustration and longing to someone - a girl - he cares about, even if it doesn't evolve into something concrete and fulfilling.
> 
> And, of course, I had to give the Kwak twins and Audi; all rich girls drive German cars (though this was first mentioned - this Audi - a few chapters back). I haven't specified the make or model of the Audi, because, frankly, I cannot be stuffed. I'm not a big fan of German cars - they are notorious for been terrible cars! Engine trouble, expensive parts to fix the broken engines - a cambelt for an Audi can cost upwards of ten percent of the fully paid price of the car itself.
> 
> I've never given a name to Grandmother, either. There's a reason for that. It wasn't a coldness or a shallowness or me been lazy; in Korea, there is still a big culture despite modernity of hierarchy, particularly for the male and female groups in families - especially rich families. Grandfather shall always be recognized as this immovable object, and Grandmother is this crashing force that dictates.
> 
> Also, I don't endorse the concept of marijuana, and smoking it. But without giving spoilers, marijuana is involved the Greenhouse scene (if you don't want to read that content)

"Oh, there you are." Grandmother's voice called as A-Yeong walked into Chae-Seon's house, having been called by the old lady ten minutes ago citing "a complication". "This is detective inspector Hui."

  
A-Yeong looked at a small, mildly chubby woman with black hair combed back in a neat bun at the base of her neck in a expensively tailored trouser and a blouse patterned lilac flowers. 

  
"If you think my Mother wouldn't spit into a police officer's tea..." Jeon said as his mother stirred a third mug of tea. "Then you don't know my Mother."

  
Jeon sniggered as DI Hui slurped a mouthful of the tea that contained two sugars and his Mother's spit, and told her that she made a lovely job of it. 

  
"Kindness to old people is a total must in Korea." Jeon whispered.

  
"You must see my problem, Mrs Li." DI Hui said.

  
"Chae-Seon is a chef, and Jeon ran the business. Everything was completely separate. The hotel is on one title, the restaurant on another title, and the vineyard and rice fields and our produce farm on, then again, another title, even thought all three combined were part of the inheriting estate. This is why I'm sure all this is a mistake."  
"I don't want to say I disagree." DI Hui said. "But I do. A fraud this extensive takes planning and you were in charge of the business implemented in the Pentrose hotel itself as been on the board of directors. Malice of forethought. I did a little digging into your own background."

  
Grandmother looked at A-Yeon, frowning.

  
"Four O-levels, no University education, and from the age of twenty-three you're whole life has been summed up in this hotel and it's estate."

  
"Your point is?" A-Yeong's eyes narrowed.

  
"You are not the trophy wife of a deluded middle aged man that your colleague Chae-Seon is." Grandmother exhaled her breath like a dragon at the police officer's words about her son. "You're an intelligent and capable woman who was the deceased's equal in every way." DI Hui clasped her hands together under her chin. "Most people think they can hide the money they steal. They're mistake is that they assume they are cleverer than I am. They underestimate me." She smiled openly. "I always find it." 

  
Her expression made A-Yeong sick to the core.

  
"Thank you very much for the tea." DI Hui bowed politely to Grandmother.

  
"Oh, you're very welcome." She purred.

\--------------------------------------

Birdsong swept through the air as Wonwoo walked through the vegetable garden. Even though it was the winter and the ground was cold and wet with only the fruits of Winter growing; apples, pears, grapes, turnips, potatoes, parsnips, certain herbs, even some mandarins, lemons, limes and onions. Even though the trees were bare of their leaves, and there was no sunlight, Wonwoo thought it was gracious and beautiful. He walked through one of the barns which Dido was fiddling about with his tools in, the only light there from a singlet candle-lit lantern that hung from the ceiling. 

  
Jeon followed his son in there, and watched as the young man chattered warmly to his old friend.

  
"A successful Hotel needs atmosphere." Jeon told Wonwoo, knowing his echoes would crowed up his head later and make him think. "Something you can feel but never touch. It was my name on the licence with all the other work taken care of by your Mum, but it was always hers, son, to give to you." Jeon followed Wonwoo and Dido through another door in the barn to the Greenhouses.

  
"Her spirit embraced the place." Jeon smiled as Wonwoo prodded Dido's shoulder, and jogged down the south end of the Greenhouse to where bright red and firm wine grapes were hanging from a vine that hung mid-air above their heads. Wonwoo plucked a few grapes, giving a couple to Dido to taste, and kept some for himself. "Yes, we grew it all here."

  
"Oh, no way!" Wonwoo cackled a laugh as Dido glared down at pot-plants on a table, and randomly pulled up one to then bring to light a yellow-painted metal tin that had hand-rolled cigarettes inside it.

  
"These fucking things are fresh from 1983." Dido confirmed proudly.

\--------------------------------------------

"Wonu?" Joshua said, having called Wonwoo's name twice but had not got a response. This time, Wonwoo sitting on a table with many pots of strawberry plants looked around at him with a ditsy, happy smile on his face, his eyes dewy and warm. He held up a cigarette, and hollowed his cheeks as he sucked in smoke from it's burning incense, before holding it out for Joshua.

  
Twenty minutes later, Joshua turned his head, exhaling smoke to the floor, lying with his head in Wonwoo's lap. "So was it really that perfect or is this just..." Joshua ran his hand through his hair as Wonwoo spoke. "Old-soul nostalgic bullshit to talk like Hannie?" Wonwoo chuckled.

  
"No, it's true." Joshua replied, half out of it from the marijuana. "For one spring, summer, autumn and winter I truly had everything I ever wanted."

  
"You were in teenage love..." Wonwoo crooned slowly.

  
"Mhm." Joshua inhaled more smoke as Wonwoo put the cigarette in-between his lips. "We were in teenage love together, Jane and I." He smiled dreamily, turning his head to the other side so he face was pressed in Wonwoo's crotch.

  
"So, now...does Jihoon love anyone?" Joshua asked. Wonwoo scrunched up his nose. "Well, I need to know about that. I demand to know about that." He continued as Wonwoo moaned discontentedly.

  
"Hmm. Honestly?"

  
"Mm."

  
"It's too early to say." Wonwoo answered.

  
"Liar." Joshua reproached.

  
"He's doesn't love anyone." Wonwoo protested. "Not like that."

  
"He will, when he meets them." Joshua said. 

  
"So, when did you know that I was the one for you?" Wonwoo asked Joshua.

  
"Mm....honestly? It's too early to say." Joshua smiled coyly, ducking his chin so he looked up through his eyelashes at Wonwoo.

  
They both chuckled, cuddling into each other.

  
"I'm so warm." Joshua said.

\-------------------------------------

"You heard her." A-Yeong said to Grandmother. "I don't know what to do or say."

  
"That is alright, my dear." Grandmother replied. "You did well."

  
"Don't try, don't fail. I'm going to let them all down. Chae-Seon, Jeon, Wonwoo -"

  
"Oh, for goodness sake..." Grandmother groaned, her expression distasteful. "Self examination is like masturbation. If to be done at all, best kept private."  
She and A-yeong both laughed, mildly appalled. A-Yeong's mug clattered down onto the table as the screams of young women filled the air. She and Grandmother rushed outside to see what was happening.

  
"You fucking idiot, get down!" Victoria was screaming at Jihoon standing on the bonnet of her Audi.

  
"You're a cockroach, a parasite!" He replied back to her. "Go to hell you bitch!"

  
"You look like a fucking prat - think you're surfing?!" Victoria made a retarded facial expression, bowing her knees for a moment. "Enough."

  
"Shut up and jog on. I'm not getting off until I talk to Elizabeth and explain to her why her boyfriend is such a piece of shit that he would cheat on her." Jihoon said.  
"Fuck off! He's the best man for her." Victoria howled.

  
"Oh, shut up." Jihoon crossed his arms, glaring as his Mother and Wonwoo's Grandmother watched on.

\-------------------------------------

Joshua laughed, curled up on Wonwoo's bed as he came up with a tray of mugs and bowls of chicken rice.

  
"You know," Joshua said, sipping a mouthful of coffee. "When we first met you'd tell me everything. You'd never stop talking. Shame I had nothing to say."

  
"So talk to me now." Wonwoo remarked, pressing a quick kiss to Joshua's neck. 

  
"Hey," Joshua rubbed Wonwoo's thigh. "Just because you've lost him doesn't mean you're going to lose me. I've moved in now, yeah?" he smiled. 

  
Wonwoo went quiet as Joshua ate half a bowl of his food, and tipped more hot water into his coffee. "The day you left...Jeonghan wasn't there all morning." Wonwoo ventured slowly.

  
"Yeah, he was with Kwak Elizabeth." Joshua said.

  
Wonwoo shook his head slightly. "I was fishing and he was with me. We kissed in the forest." His whole body screamed in agony as Joshua lowered his mug of tea back down onto the mug, and stared silently at Wonwoo.

\-----------------------------------------

Joshua furiously walked back and forth across the paved area of the back garden at Wonwoo's Mother's house, his mood vicious.

  
"How dare you?!" Joshua howled when Jeonghan picked up his end of the call.

  
"Whoa, whoa, Shua, what's happened?" Jeonghan said.

  
"My partner and you get together on the floor of a fucking forest and you do this to me?" Joshua yelled.

  
"Shua, I'm at work." Jeonghan said.

  
"I don't care; it's not as though I'm not angry at him, but Wonwoo right now is clearly vulnerable and you've always been the King of not keeping your cock in your pants!" Joshua hissed.

  
"Actually, he is an adult and as such he has the the perfect right to be responsible for what he does. He kissed me, Joshua."

  
"I'm his partner and your best friend." Joshua reproached.

  
"I know, but right now I've got no idea what to say."

  
"Good thing I moved out of Seoul, I don't want to be anywhere near you. I don't want you to come anywhere near the Pentrose again, understand? Now fuck off." Joshua hung up the lung, before storming to the back fence, jumping over it, and walking away onto the main dirt road that led from the village and the Pentrose to Wonwoo's Mother's house.

\------------------------------------------

"Sweetheart, you need to get down." A-Yeong appealed to Jihoon.

  
"I'm not nominating myself as a boyfriend for Lizzie -"

  
"That is shit, Jihoon, and you know it!" Victoria pointed up at him.

  
"But that prick she is with has cheated on her several times, and I've got photographs of him shagging Lisa Lu, Kim Hee Sun, and a English tourist in the field just down from the primary school - he always takes them down there."

  
"Oh, just happened to be there every-time by accident did you?" Victoria snarled as Jihoon climbed onto the roof of the Audi. She looked at Grandmother. "Tell him to get off."

  
"No, he's over eighteen, we can't control him." She said demurely and extremely old-lady toned. "I mean, look -" She gestured to the roof of the Audi. "He's like a wild beast."

  
"Fucking midget one." Victoria's lip curled.

  
"Ring Victoria and tell her that the only guy who has ever genuinely wanted to be her friend and not have sex with her and then dump her wants to talk to her." Jihoon said to Victoria.

  
"No fucking way does she need to hear from a dick like you." Victoria crossed her arms, smirking cruelly. For how much she and Elizabeth looked alike, it was disturbing to see something like that expression.

  
"I'm going inside, I've got leaking heart valves." Grandmother remarked.


	13. Do You Remember When I Didn't Want To Leave You That Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua and Wonwoo's relationship goes bad to worse as they navigate what has happened, Suri delivers dire news about the Pentrose to Chae-Seon, Jihoon and Victoria's argument continues, Kim Mingyu is formally introduced to the work much to Joshua's dismay, A-Yeong has to do conniving business for the benefit of everyone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mingyu is here on a BMW motorcycle and a nice leather jacket! Finally - after twelve chapters, cue number thirteen, he is here.

"From sunrise through to sunset...you're always on my mind." Joshua lay on his bed in his new home - his first house - with his feet on the pillows and the lights turned off except for the two lamps, one on each bedside table listening to vinyl records by English War-Time crooners. 

  
"I'm glad that boy has old records." Jeon said, coming over to sit on the edge of the bed and examine Joshua's face. "Music sounds better with vinyl scratches. He must have got them from Jihoon. He's got a lot of that stuff. The vinyl scratches show the music has had a life."

  
"Joshua!" Wonwoo knocked on Joshua's bedroom door, which was locked. He had entered into the house with his own set of keys for the place. Joshua ignored it, continuing to listen to the crooner's voice like it was a lifeline. "Joshua!" Wonwoo called again.

  
Wonwoo leant his head against the door. "I'm sorry. I let you down -" A moment later it was unlocked and pulled open sharply.

  
"I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have said anything to you -" Joshua pushed past Wonwoo with the record still playing and moved smoothly down the stairs, ignoring his partner as Wonwoo called his name again.

  
Wonwoo groaned, resting his hand on his hips, regret filling up his chest. He should never have said what he did. He should never have let the marijuana have him admit that to Joshua because now Joshua would never forgive him. He had destroyed a relationship and a friendship for Joshua.

\---------------------------------

"Mrs Jeon! Chae-Seon!" Suri rushed downstairs to the Pentrose's kitchens where Chae-Seon was in the middle of dictating dinner service to the hotel and restaurants guests.  
"What, what?" She said. "How long for those steak Nam-Il?" She asked one of the assistant chefs who was seemingly filling in Jihoon's spot.

  
"Thirty second, chef." He replied as a frying pan set itself alight.

  
"I need Wonwoo's phone number." Suri quickly said as Chae-Seon chucked a tea-towel over her shoulder.

  
"You can tell me if there's a problem, my love." The middle-aged lady tapped her nose gently, before spinning around to yell about the thickness of a sauce and how many minutes it took to roast the hazlenuts for a creme brulee flavoured dessert.

  
"It's quite big." Suri understated. 

  
"Can you lot survive this service for five minutes without me?" Chae-Seon called.

  
"Yes, chef!" Twenty people of the kitchen staff replied.

  
The two women walked into the adjoining office to the Pentrose's kitchens which had been Jeon's little private study. The room was full of his little knick-knacks which had been kept from gathering dust by attention still been given in care to him.

  
"I'll break it down." Suri stuttered. "The wedding this weekend is having second thoughts about the Pentrose as choice of location since finding out that Jeon Senior has passed away. But we really need this wedding and this wedding's money. We are losing money. Thousands. I've looked over the accounts for the last six months before Jeon Senior died and they have never quite balanced, Chae-Seon. We have a huge problem if these people cannot be convinced to have their wedding here."

  
As Chae-Seon buried her face in her hands, before looking back at Suri with worried, bear-like eyes, Suri wished Chae-Seon had just given her Wonwoo's phone number.

\---------------------------------------

Jihoon scoffed as Victoria's climbed into the driver's seat of the Audi, and undid a bar of museli, putting a chunk of it in-between dark pink painted lips as she leant backwards out of the open window to look at him. 

  
"You can have some if you're hungry." She offered.

  
"Hello Elizabeth, nice to see you again." Jihoon replied. He laughed aloud as he caught the museli bar single-handedly as Victoria threw it at him in temper.

  
"Sucked in!" He called to the sky.

  
A-Yeong walked back out of the house having made Grandmother a cup of tea, and carried one herself. She leant over to the drivers window, and peered in at Victoria.

  
"Why don't you call Lizzie?" She implored.

  
"Not a hope in hell." Victoria responded.

  
"You know you feel this way because your pride is hurt?" A-Yeong said. She wasn't having a go at her best-friend's niece. Victoria just looked at her listlessly.

  
"Can you please get your son off of the roof of my car? It's been five hours." Victoria reclined back in the drivers seat, closing her eyes.

  
"Let me talk to Lizzie." Jihoon said.

  
Victoria slammed the heel of her leather boot against the Audi's horn.

\----------------------------------------------

Joshua felt dead on his feet as he finished walking to Jeonghan's apartment. He had walked the thirteen kilometers to the train station in the village, and that had crossed the three connecting city stations through twenty-four different stops until he had arrived in Seoul, and had then walked another four kilometers to Jeonghan's apartment block, his feet and thighs killing him painfully. By the time he arrived it was ten minutes to eleven 'o' clock at night, and he sincerely hoped he was waking Jeonghan up.  
"You are unbelieveable." Joshua called through the door as he knocked and he didn't immediately get a reply even though the lights were on indoors by the bar of gold that appeared out onto the hallway.

  
The door opened, and he was met with the sight of a shirtless Jeonghan in a pair of black cords; his hair was mussed up and fresh from a clean in the shower.

  
"I hope you haven't got someone in there and do you have any idea how long we've been together?" Joshua said, walking across the threshold directly into the open planned sitting-room, dining-room, kitchen and doors to the balcony just off the sitting room and dining room areas. He stared at Jeonghan open-mouthed, his whole body killing him. "Years and years and you -"

  
"Shua."Jeonghan said, pushing him over the arm of the couch, before climbing over the top of him. "Get over it because you fucking well know it was his fault and you're going to stop yelling at me over it because it's not right."

  
"I'm sorry." Joshua said.

  
"What?" Jeonghan paused.

  
"I said I'm sorry. You're right, I'm wrong. I'm sorry." Joshua continued.

  
"You're sorry?" Jeonghan repeated again, shocked into surprise.

  
"Yes, it's just that - where Wonwoo is concerned I get a little bit..." Joshua struggled with his words. "I lost it. It was unfair and I over-reacted and of course I wanted you to come back to the Pentrose to see me."

  
"You mean it?" Jeonghan settled down so he lied down on the couch beside Joshua, their bodies pressing together, Joshua on his back and Jeonghan on his side.

  
"Yeah." Joshua promised.

  
_Fuck. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit_, Jeonghan thought. _I shouldn't have called Mingyu_

\---------------------------------

Kim Mingyu checked his watch and saw it read nine thirty in the morning as he rode his BMW motorcycle through the main street of the Gyreyeongsan mountain-side village where a chicken crossed the main street, and the houses and shops looked reasonably tidy and upmarket, considering that the more rural you traveled from Seoul and the other South Korean cities, the poorer, rustic, and increasingly disadvantaged the world seemed to become. 

  
He parked three doors down from a café, and pushed his visor up as for the first time in four years he saw his ex-boyfriend Joshua Hong, umbrella tucked beneath his arm, walk out of a Hanok-conversion café with a two English girls - tourists - one on each arm. He was happy and smiling, and his hair instead of been pure black was a handsome light brown colour. Mingyu got off of his motorcycle and began to walk up the street as he saw Joshua go back inside the café', the two girls sitting down on an outside table, laughing amongst themselves and holding one another's hands across the table's surface.

\----------------------------------------

"Good morning." A-Yeong personally greeted the Miss Lau - a Singaporean woman with an interesting face - who it seemed was the person behind the questioning of the Pentrose for the wedding venue the next day; Chae-Seon had had a conversation with her fiance', the Mr Kim, on the phone to find that he was astounded by the Pentrose, and assured them that he was blown-away by their gorgeous Hotel and the service they gave to their clients and their guests. He had seen the five-star reviews of the vineyards and the restaurant on the internet and the magazines, and Chae-Seon had taken the time to mention that the likes of the actress Michelle Yeoh and K-pop stars brought their Mother's and other family to the Pentrose frequently, more than five times a year.

  
"Let me organize the wedding for you." A-Yeong said to the young woman straight up. "You're so stressed out; you're on a diet? So much pride and dignity, happiness and memory runs on this day that is supposed to be all about you but right now it really doesn't feel like this, does it?" She gazed at the young woman directly.  
"I'm Helena." She quickly introduced herself.

  
"Helena." A-Yeong smiled warmly, and covered the girl's hands in her own. She was around thirty-two years old, but A-Yeong felt that anyone over ten years younger than her was little, a baby. _"Use the happy, loving Mummy that cares technique," Chae-Seon had smirked wryly, grating hard sugar-candy into a cermaic bowl for a fresh series of desserts for the menu tonight. "I'll explain after, but we need this. This is going to make us again. Our first proper booking after Dad dying. I need this for my soul."_

  
"You and your fiance have set a budget of quite a respectable sum." A-Yeong squeezed Helena's hands. Helena's cheeks glowed. "Don't worry about a thing; it's nothing to be ashamed of or worried about. Let me show you the wedding me and Chae-Seon -"

  
"Joen Chae-Seon? the chef?"

  
"The very woman." A-Yeong confirmed proudly. Let us and our family at the Estate show you the magical day you can hold in your heart forever as your love holds you." She tucked some of Helena's loose, waved hair behind her ear. A-Yeong saw she had a gap - just a little one - in-between her front teeth. "Don't worry about your diet today. Let's have some cake." A-Yeong moved in her head closer to Helena. "Don't you dare argue; chocolate is the best." She added in a whisper.

  
Helena grinned widely as she gave a small sob, her eyes wet.

  
_Got her, her wedding, and her husband's money_, A-Yeong thought.

\------------------------------------------------

I think he's working here, Mingyu thought, approaching the counter. "Heya." Mingyu said to the Joshua, holding his motorcycle helmet under his arm.  
"Hi, what can I get you?" Joshua wrote numbers in a lodge book, squinting down at it as he checked something.

  
"Coffee. Black." Mingyu watched as Joshua still didn't look up at him. A waitress collected the order from Joshua, and set about getting a latte glass and turning on the coffee machine. "I can't smoke in here, right?" Only then did Joshua look up at him, and his eyes went wide. 

  
"Only if it's 1983 again and no one has said to me about it." Joshua said, his voice paper-thin, visibly going as hard as a rock.

  
"Right, I'll be outside then." Mingyu winked at Joshua but saw how the waitress blushed, thinking it was for her. For good measure, Mingyu smiled at her, before walking back through the door. A moment later, he felt a thump on his back, and looked to see Joshua.

  
"I don't know what the hell you are doing, or how the hell you found out where I am and all of this, but piss off." Joshua said.

  
Mingyu pulled at the left pocket on the front of Joshua's jeans. "Do you remember when i said I didn't want to leave you that night?" he said before letting Joshua go back inside, noticing a lead pencil tucked behind his ear.

\--------------------------------------

"I spoke to Helena - Miss Lau - and she's definitely agreed to have it at the Pentrose." A-Yeong confirmed to Chae-Seon and Suri as they shared a morning-tea break - Chae-Seon had Suri had been working since six 'o' clock that morning - in the attic upstairs, all the windows shut down with a natural fire burning away wood in a grate by their table. 

  
"That's fantastic." Chae-Seon clapped her hands together.

  
"Certainly timely." Suri cast a side-long look at Chae-Seon over the rim of her coffee-mug.

  
"And Helena has agreed that I supervise the entire day, obviously, we don't have much time - only four days -"

  
"So we need to get the firecrackers up." Chae-Seon giggled at her onw dirty joke as A-Yeong made a disgusted noise and Suri didn't quite understand.

  
"Light the firecrackers that are up our arses." A-Yeong explained in a lowered tone to Suri even though it was just them three alone.

  
"No, no, you get it wrong." Chae-Seon waved a hand, having made up the saying when she has half-drunk and fifteen years old. "We need to light the firecrackers that are fucking our arses."

  
A-Yeong groaned as Suri laughed.

  
"She wants a marble chocolate wedding cake by the way, and English food that she eats from _Ang Moh_ restaurants in Singapore and on her holidays to New Zealand."

  
"_Ang Moh_ is Anglo-Saxon." Chae-Seon said for Suri's benefit. "Let me guess; delectable salmon is somewhere on the menu, with a to die for Italian tiramasu with something like black forest fruits for the dessert, with a few other condiments like..." Chae-Seon's mouth curved upwards. "Kangaroo meat?"

  
Suri choked on her coffee. "She wants lots of red wine and champagne." A-Yeong waved her hands about. "God, I feel like a teenager and I don't know why."

  
"I think me talking about been anal-fucked by firecrackers started it." Chae-Seon pursed her lips, mockingly wise. "I got to go, pasta and mushrooms and tomatoes in the oven. Tea-time over."

  
Chae-Seon raced down three stories to the Pentrose's kitchen just as a timer went off for the Italian dish wrapped in browned baking paper on a tray. _Spaghetti alle Vongole_. Baked pasta, tomatoes, mushrooms, herbs and salt to perfection, and served with a dry white wine. This was a dish that people thought only Italian people could cook; the thought of she and Jeon back in the latter third-part of the 20th Century as Korean people with Italian food on their menu - that had caused shockwaves. They could charge as much as the equivalent to £80 for a dish that cost less than £5 to make. "Now, this honey is absolutely fantastic." Chae-Seon crooned to Jihoon as he put on a apron, as were the rules.

  
"Mm." He examined the meal down before him through the opening in the brown paper that Chae-Seon had done. She looked at his split lip, chin, and the skin under his eye was cut as well, but she refrained from making a comment. If he and Wonwoo had been stupid enough to have a punch-up, that was there own problem. "May I?"  
"Certainly." She gave him a spoon. 

  
"Mm. Jeon showed you this." Jihoon said.

  
"No, my Mama taught me and I taught him. Didn't he tell you?" Chae-Seon rested her hands on her hips.

  
"He said to Wonwoo, Bo Hyuk and I he was trying to figure out how to feed his diabetes-stricken father one day and he looked in a book and found this dish. As he couldn't read the Italian he looked at the pictures and tried to copy it. His Mother had brought the book by accident in a second-hand book shop, not checking the print language." Jihoon replied. Chae-Seon leant against the bench, chuckling.

  
"It was your Grandad by the way that had diabetes and wouldn't eat, not my father-in-law." She told him. "Typical, my husband; telling tall tales for his boys."

  
"He could never cook like this." Jihoon ate another mouthful. He cleaned the spoon on his apron as Chae-Seon pardoned herself, her phone ringing in the pocket of her dress.


	14. A Turn-Around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Joshua/Mingyu/Wonwoo scene in the Village and a moment of civil domesticity between Grandmother and Chae-Seon as the old lady gets up to the same conniving tricks she had a hand in teaching her son how to do

"Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait." Mingyu looked up as Joshua again was assaulted by another un-wanted presence, looking around the admittedly attractive arse in tight white jeans of a waitress as she brough his coffee to him as a tall, handsome, black-haired man ran up the pavement to Joshua.

  
"Look, I'm sorry. I was really angry." Joshua got his words in as the other man doubled over, breathing heavily. "I'm really glad you talked to me despite everything." He rested a hand on the man's shoulder. "No more weird things happening, ok?"

  
Mingyu's chest jumped with a silent laugh as the breathless man nodded, and Joshua left him there on the footpath, letting go of his shoulder, not quite doing anything.

  
"Sit down, I'll get you some water." Joshua finally spoke again.

\--------------------------------------

"That's great, thank you so much. That's wonderful." Chae-Seon got off the phone to a caterer's that had in stock the particular kinds of wines that Helena Lau had ordered for the wedding reception.

  
"You sound happy, dear." Grandmother commented, doing her cross-word and fiddling about with the laptop that Bo Hyuk had bought for her for Christmas last yeat.. "What happened yesterday anyhow with Jihoon on top of the twins car and what's going on with A-Yeong's husband? I've seen neither the rear or the hair of Li."

  
"Jihoonie split his lip, chin, and eye open when Victoria wielded a gold club and he fell off the roof in fright. He got out the way just in time as she got in and put her foot down on the accelerator because she was angry enough to run him over." Chae-Seon burst out laughing. Her Mother-in-Law stared at her like she was mad. "Oh, and Li - he's been doing everything normally. He's accepted been shunted away for his son's apprenticeship, but he gets along alright with Dido in the garden. He lives in A-Yeong and he's cottage, just as always. But he's in the spare bedroom, and is only allowed to use the shower, no the spa bath. I shouldn't laugh, he's my best friend's little guy - Jihoon I mean. But Lizzie ought to realize how much he loves her. He's such a quiet boy." Chae-Seon added. "What are you doing? I thought you hated laptops?"

  
"I'm following the money." Grandmother announced happily, moving her hands into the air in a light gesture. "Oh, it really is quite Byzantine. But...fascinating." She slowed down and wrote a note in a notebook. _Avenger_. She circled it, tapping through different tabs on the screen before her as Chae-Seon went back to the list of food and wine for the Kim/Lau wedding.

  
"If there's a way out of this fraud mess -" The old lady cracked her knuckles. "I will find it."

  
"Where's Wonwoo?" Chae-Seon asked.

  
"Oh, he's out. Car's gone. The broadband has been at a high level all week with he not illegally downloading films and showing me how to do online shopping for that book I've wanted to get my hands on." Grandmother raised her eyebrows as Chae-Seon shook her head, smiling. It wasn't as though she and the old Dragon never got on; they had their moments.

  
Back in the village, Joshua brought the lodge book for the Hanok-conversion cafe out to the table where Wonwoo sat; he sat opposite Wonwoo so over Wonwoo's shoulder he could glance occasionally at his ex, Mingyu, if he wanted to.

  
"I've hated been without you." Wonwoo said to Joshua. "It's been horrible trying to get to sleep without your body been there, either. You're so warm beside me underneath the covers." Wonwoo briefly caught at Joshua's fingertips with his own, teasing the older man. "Can we get back on track?"

  
"Yes." Joshua said to Wonwoo. As Wonwoo's head ducked to drink some more water, Joshua glared foully at Mingyu, who just grinned in response. _Fuck off_, Joshua mouthed.


	15. Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Joshua getting involved too deeply in the burning rain with Mingyu in the village, to the Kim-Lau Wedding finally taking place in magnificent fashion at the Pentrose with all the Estate's suppliers on strike over three-months lack of wages, the Jeon and Li Families with their friends are called to arms to stop the catering been a total disaster. In admist of all the chaos, A-Yeong finally begins to re-connect with her husband and the Father of her child after his affair with their old nanny they employed for Jihoon as a child

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." A-Yeong lightly jogged hand in hand with Helena Lau across the grass to where the inside the Pentrose, the ball-room and tea-rooms were been decorated freshly that morning with flowers and ribbons and the silk banners for the reception, and the dining-hall was decorated with Hawthorn and Birch trees brought indoors, creating an arching canopy and hedging inside the dining-hall itself for when the main dinner was served before the dancing, speeches, and general fuck-ups on the best man's part. A-Yeong couldn't help but be caught up in Helena's happiness as in the garden on the west side of the Pentrose the altar made of lichen covered tree branches, interwoven in a Celtic-like design within a wooden frame and entangled with tea roses and creeping ivy moon; the Baptist Priest was having a cup of tea and talking to Wonwoo and Dido who were checking the outdoor arrangements were perfect, and the pews for the wedding guests decorated with white roses and foxglove were not vanishing into the lawn. It had rained all last night, leaving the ground a bit soft, but not completely treachorous. The Dawn's frost had made it firm again. Wonwoo looked extremely happy, and maybe A-Yeong thought wedding fever had caught at him too.

  
"Yeah, not bad." For a few months before Jeon Senior had died, Dido had encouraged Wonwoo to come down and get his hands dirty, as he had done since the son of his friend was seven years old. _"Let's make something sweet out of anything you can find around here at the Pentrose, and one day some rich woman will want it at her wedding. Teach you some stuff, eh?" Dido had put it to him._ Today, the man had his slowly lengthening mane of hair up in a bun on the top of his head, and his beard was soft and clean; he was in a long-sleeved navy short and khaki shorts, worksman boots on his feet. "Rustic. But with a touch of class. A bit like yours truly." Dido praised Wonwoo's work as he knelt down and hammered pegs into the ground, securing the structure as to not collapse on the bride and groom.

  
"If you just check in, then you can relax upstairs. Thank you, perfect!" The men looked around as A-Yeong called to the bridesmaids. A-Yeong was wearing a tight-fitting burgundy dress on her trim figure with a equally tight cape coming down to her elbow, structured from a high-neck on the dress itself. 

  
Jeon wolf-whistled out, and he knew A-Yeong would have been delighted to hear it - if only she could. "Getting married." He remarked, as the flower children and the children of the wedding guests ran around amock in satin dresses and flowers in their hair. "It's the closest most people come to being on a twenty-four hour cocaine binge." He watched as Chae-Seon came out in a dark green satin dress with a sweetheart neckline, a calve-length hem, high-heels to match and wearing a floating cardigan of jersey fabric identical to one his Mother had, only six sizes bigger. The fabric itself was patterned like an art-deco painting; grey smudges of varying shades everywhere, on the plain white fabric. 

  
She greeted the bride and groom, kissing both of their cheeks and smiling widely. The effect of her was only slightly ruined by the headscarf - it was just a tea-towel - she had around her head so no black hairs would be found in the food, and the dirty apron she had around her ensemble. "Boundless energy, high as a kite, nothing but me, me, me." Jeon continued. "But, believe me, the cocaine works out cheaper in the long run."

  
"Wow, this is amazing, honey." Chae-Seon pinched A-Yeong's hip affectionately.

  
"How beautiful." Helena hugged her fiance, smiling gently.

  
"We're not lesbians." A-Yeong quickly said. The groom proceeded to nearly piss himself laughing. "We just like each other quite a bit. Known her for over thirty years." A-Yeong flushed as Helena cooed.

  
"Everyone's worked really hard on it." Chae-Seon said. A text chime came from the Groom's jeans.

  
"Shit, it's Dad, one minute babe. Excuse me." The groom bowed to Chae-Seon and A-Yeong before jogging off for some privacy, and A-Yeong got screamed for by one of the waitresses inside the dining-hall.

  
"Are you ok? Nervous jittery-jitters?" Helena giggled with Chae-Seon.

  
"I've read about you in magazines, I can't believe I'm talking to you." Helena gushed.

  
"Oh, my dear, don't worry about me. This is your day. Your the most famous woman in the room. Relax, that's an order - now, tell me," Chae-Seon put her arm around Helena. "What does your wedding dress look like?"

  
A-Yeong caught sight of her husband in a suit, and gestured wildly for him to come over to her in the dining hall as she was put on hold on the land-line phone that was specifically for the hotel only, coming from reception.

  
"They're not coming." She said, horrified, to Li. "Hi, yes, hello -" She was taken off hold. "Yes, there has been issues with the business, but I assure you all accounts will be settled at the end of the month. Hello? Hello?" She looked at Li in dismay and swore as the wine suppliers on the other end of the line hung up the call.

  
"My darling, I know I disgraced you and Jihoon and everyone at Jeon's funeral." Li swallowed heavily. "There is nothing I can do about that; this is not defence of my actions, but by been as good as dead to our son because of it has been living hell. But let me help you. I know some people who will help us; not our traditional suppliers, but help all the same."

\----------------------------------------

"Hey. Hey!" Joshua looked up from his phone, his ear-bud headphones in his ear as he heard shouting. He looked away and walked faster down the side-street of the village. When he had mouthed for Mingyu to fuck off while Wonwoo wasn't looking, Mingyu had fucked off, vanishing in a roar of his motorcycle.

  
He gripped the handle of his umbrella tighter as Mingyu invaded his personal space, getting in under the umbrella as well.

  
"What are you doing here?" Joshua asked.

  
"Don't I even get a kiss?" Mingyu asked.

  
"You tipped a jug of water on me in a fight and while we were together you got a girl pregnant. You were a really bad boyfriend." Joshua said, but he didn't fight as Mingyu's hand came to hold his chin, and hot lips were pressed against his. Mingyu kissed him gently like for a long time, and Joshua, despite his will, had to reach out to slip an arm around Mingyu's back so he wouldn't fall over. When Mingyu finally pulled back, satisfied, their lips were slick with spit and hot and swollen. Joshua consciously wiped his mouth, and tried to ignore the rapid tingling Mingyu had left there.

  
"A little birdy said to me you'd appreciate a visit. I think the little birdy in question was been a dipstick, but, nevertheless, I'm here." Mingyu replied.

  
"I don't want to know about you. I don't care." Joshua said. "Just go to the grave, Gyu."

  
"One more kiss before I get buried then?" Mingyu inquired, and Joshua gasped as strong arms embraced him in close, and he was drown out by Mingyu completely, the umbrella coming to the ground as misty rain began to fall through the air, burning.

\------------------------------------

"It seems everyone who has ever supplied us - even down to the napkins and the toilet paper - is owed money." A-Yeong leant her head on her husband's shoulder in the dining hall.

  
"How long is it since Jeon last paid them?" Li asked.

  
"Three months."

  
"Oh." Li groaned. "Chae-Seon and I thought something was up."

  
"Christ, it's a good thing he's dead otherwise I'd kill him myself." A-Yeong said, wrapping her arm through the crook of Li's elbow and holding on tightly. He reached around her and hugged her frame to his body. It had been months since he had properly embraced her, and got blanketed in her perfume, and he had missed it.  
"How am I going to tell Helena?"

  
"Wait. As I said we can still do this."

  
"With what? There's no food; there was a choice of two entrees, two mains, and two desserts. There's no wagyu beef for the entree broth and no smoked salmon slices for the second entree - some type of French thing, Chae-Seon knows. Then the mains are either slow-roasted crackled pork or flambed kangaroo meat with blueberry sauce. We don't have enough pork for three hundred and eighty six people, and the kangaroo meat - shit! The only thing that isn't effected are the desserts; the wedding cake is all done - thank God - and the -"

  
"Don't make a mention of anything right now. Tell the groom and bride later as they are served the food that there were comlications. They will be too drunk and happy to care. Happiest day of their lives." Li advised. "Go down and tell Chae-Seon to cook whatever she damn well likes; rich, simply, wholesome food. British, French, Korean, Italian food - no matter what. I'll get some stuff for her, but there needs to be a big fucking shake-up. Shake-up like big-time." A-Yeong laughed, Li giving her a handkerchief as her eyes watered.

  
"It's time. You'll be alright, but, wow, three hundred and sixty covers - Jihoonie and Chae-Seon will need my hands. I love you." Li kissed A-Yeong's head, before leaving her to the care of the waitresses.

  
"This was once a family business." Jeon kept a door-open as Chae-Seon cackled laughter as Father and Son Li rushed into the kitchen, buckets of fresh river clams and oysters in their hands, as well as thirty huge salmon coming in boxes of ice in Li's arms. Chae-Seon whipped a tea-towel towards Jihoon's backside, keeping the stress levels to a minimum as Wonwoo, Dido, the three tradesmen that had been at Jeon's burial service in the lake, and Jihoon began to gut the fish and clean the clams and oysters as the owner from the local pub in town rolled in kegs of soju and English-style beer while the pub owner's son with good taste raided the underground cellar beneath the industrial meat fridges. "Everyone worked, everyone made it happen, and the harder it was, the happier he were." Jeon glowed internally at the way Jihoon de-gutted and cleaned the fish of it's head with a big cleaver knife. "And that kid has talent, just like his bastard Father."

  
Jeon watched his Mother fill up glass flutes with champagne in tailored trousers and a Jackson Wu coat and peel plus chop potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, parnsips, celery, and radish. Dido and Suri interacted naturally with the employed kitchen staff, unloading bottles of wine and table placements.

  
"And as I see there's no opposition to this union, I now pronounce you husband and wife!" The Priest declared of Helena and her husband. Tears slipped down A-Yeong's face as the three hundred and eighty six wedding guests erupted into a series of cheers and applause as the couple kissed. From the roof of the hotel, a pyrotechnic display had been arranged; the tears fell harder and the smiles became wider and all possible noise louder as the fireworks - simply gold - exploded into arcs into the silver opaline sky, heaven's lights as renaissance painters depicted shining down behind the Pentrose in the distance. Helena had worn a dress the image of Grace Kelly's when she had married the King of Monaco. For decades, A-Yeong had seen hundreds of beautiful brides; short and fat, tall and thin, big breasts, large backsides, no jawlines, double eye-lid surgery, Kpop-style anorexia. The lot. But, to her, Helena Lau - now Kim - was probably the most transcending A-Yeong had ever seen.

  
"Everyone at the back turn to the front for the photo!" A-Yeong yelled through a megaphone left behind by Dido, before quickly hurling it out of the way as the wedding guests pissed themselves laughing and the photographer tried to get everyone within the lense's frame. A moment later, the flash that A-Yeong had seen and had stood before so many times went off as the crowd's chanted countdown from three finished, and rose-petals were thrown in the air above Helena and her husband.

  
"Service!" Chae-Seon yelled as she decorated a plate of steamed and salted salmon with fry-grilled skin with crystalized pansy flower leaves. 

  
"I love that word." Jeon said, inhaling the smell of cooking fish and melting chocolate bubbling away on the stove, thick and glossy enough to see your face in; Li and chocolate had been a match made in chef-skills heaven. He could work a texture and a gloss that even Chae-Seon couldn't quite manage. "It's a call to arms. When you're in it, nothing else in the world exists. Just service."

  
"Table sixty-six needs _Chianti_." Dido announced.

  
"Why? It tastes like piss!" Li repsonded, groaning. Jihoon laughed, but ducked his head as his Father caught his eye, and smiled.

  
"Once you've experience service you just want more of it." Jeon explained richly, remembering his adoration of the wildness. "It's like a drug you never want to come down from."

  
"Well?" Jihoon asked his Mother as she came down, beaming. He saw his Father melt at the sight of rose-petals in his Mother's black hair as one by one he gently plucked them out, wrapped them up in a handkerchief and put them in his pocket. True love, Wonwoo mouthed to him across the other side of the kitchen.

  
"Nothing but empty plates. I said to Helena about the food and you're right, she doesn't care!" A-Yeong exclaimed joyfully. "Just the dark chocolate _tiramisu_ and the coffee chocolate deconstructed - people up there adore that, can't wait for it to be served."

  
"How do we do it, eh?" Grandmother said, sneakily drinking some champagne straight from the bottle.

  
"English, Italian, and French peasant food - cheap, delcious, and filling." Chae-Seon said as she plated up dishes of black forest fruits to go with the chocolate tiramasu and served thimble-like tea-cups of rich espresso to go with the Italian_ tiramisu_.

  
"There's something intoxicating about a full restaurant." Jeon sprinted after A-Yeong as she went back to the reception. "The noise, the heat, the sheer intensity. It's no longer just a room full of people. It becomes something alive." He inhaled the scent of the birch trees and the hawthorn, plus three hundred and eighty six different types of perfume, deodorant, body-spray, shampoo and washing-powder from the guests and their clothes. "No broken hearts, here."

_\------------------------------------_

"Fuck, where have you been!" Wonwoo laughed, sweeping Joshua up into his arms as Jihoon found him and brought him down to the now completely empty lobby of the Pentrose.

  
"Happy?" Joshua commented.

  
"Who wouldn't be?" Wonwoo high-fived him, and they continued holding hands. "You could have come down and had so much fun in the kitchen with us."

  
"I think your Mum would have de-boned me, made my lungs and guts and heart into offal." Joshua joked. "You smell like the reception menu, yeah?"  
"In fact," Wonwoo smiled. "There's lots of stuff we could be doing." He stroked Joshua's cheek.

  
"Aren't you tired?" Joshua asked. "That's not an excuse, but, literally - you must be exhausted if the real thing is like it is from the movies."

  
Wonwoo chuckled, kissing Joshua's neck. "I was a bit tired but then I saw you and suddenly I'm electric."

  
Joshua smiled, going quiet in Wonwoo's arms as the man held him close. Joshua, underlying, had been craving Wonwoo's touch and hold again as he had suffered the shock in the aftermath of the kiss - who was he kidding? It had been more than that - with Mingyu.

  
Kim Mingyu. The handsome, intelligent, talented, funny, utterly worst boyfriend in history. 

  
Wonwoo, the shorter, more handsome, even more intelligent, academic, wordly, richer, version of Mingyu without the bisexuality and was now meant to be married because he had a child.

  
_This is going to take a long time to explain and work out_, Joshua thought tiredly.


	16. Family Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grandmother discovers the way for her family's exit out of the "Fraud Mess", Joshua doesn't say no to Mingyu even when he is beginning to drown while Chae-Seon and A-Yeong talk about their husbands, dead and alive

"Okay, now, this is definitely harrassment." Joshua said to Mingyu, sitting behind one of the garden walls on the mossy steps; due to the way the ground gave and flowed across the Pentrose estate, he was three storeys lower than if he was in the lobby of the hotel. Joshua had gone back to the Greenhouse and had collected the yellow-painted tin after he had had sex with Wonwoo in one of the empty guest rooms upstairs. They couldn't be bothered going back to Wonwoo's Mother's house, or the thirteen kilometer drive to Joshua's house by the river. "You've indecently stuck your tongue down my throat, groped my arse, felt up my crotch, and stuck your hand down into my underwear. And you're un-invited on my partner's property."

  
"You're smoking spliff." Mingyu replied drily, scenting the cigarette's smoke.

  
Joshua rolled his eyes, hunching his shoulders.

  
"What if I bring gifts?" Joshua looked up at the bottle of champagne Mingyu held out which he was sure that tall man had pinched from the wedding party. 

  
"You changed your clothes." Mingyu said. Yeah, because the last ones got covered in cum, Joshua thought. Mingyu sat down on the ground directly beside Joshua, their knees touching. Mingyu swigged a gulp of the champagne that Joshua knew was likely to be £300 a bottle. "You look really nice." He said of Joshua's cardigan and jeans.

  
Joshua laughed, the marijuana cooling him down a bit. "What?" Mingyu said. "You don't take me seriously at all, do you?"

  
"Mm." They swapped, Mingyu giving Joshua the champagne and Joshua giving him the marijuana cigarette. "I can't be fucking bothered arguing with you." And I can feel every part of my body thanks to Wonwoo, he added privately in his head.

  
"You're still pissed off at me?"

  
"You know it wasn't vodka in that jug, and any liquid - alcohol, rain, water, that prolonged exposure - you know starts to kill me." Joshua said firmly. "I was having a go at you about the rumors about Mi-Young, but then you tipped that all over me in the bar, and all of your mates joined in. Raw Vodka tipped on your skin even if you're not allergic hurts, yeah? It's a fucking chemical, toxic shit that people put down their throats. Even when I ran out into the street and people came up to me seeing what they thought were second degrees burns all over my body, you just laughed and called me a wimp. It was three years ago, and, I don't care, but come the fuck on, Mingyu. I had to be in hospital for three weeks where I was treated like a Da Vinci painted in a museum; hundreds of doctors coming to see the sight of a patient that had the extremely rare aquagenic urticaria."

  
"What would happen if that got tipped on you?" Mingyu inquired of the champagne bottle.

  
"You know what happens. I'm in agony, my skin starts to turn red and weep, I can't breathe, I start to bleed everywhere and do my best to get inside as quickly as I can and the wet clothes off my skin because it makes it worse." Joshua replied coldly.

  
"The spliff isn't doing much for you." Mingyu laughed.

  
"I'm asking you again; what do you want?" Joshua said.

  
"As I said a little birdy told me you were about to be dropped; dumped. You were available again and that I should call on you."

  
"That is bullshit." Joshua replied darkly to Mingyu. 

  
"We did things earlier that you said to yourself you wouldn't do either." Mingyu smirked.

  
"And look at me." Joshua rolled the sleeves of his cardigan up to show the redness like sun-burn on his skin that was light coloured but still looked tender. Some of it appeared on his throat, chest, the back of neck and on the side of cheekbone on the right. "Why did you knock the umbrella out of my hands?"

  
"Why do you insist on fighting me?" Mingyu said. "The way we kissed; bullshit. Don't you dare tell me that it wasn't, because you know."

  
"You're just someone I loved at one stage." Joshua answered. He stood up but before he could walk away Mingyu's fingers laced through one of the belt loops on Joshua's jeans.  
"Maybe I was getting kinda of used to been someone you loved." Mingyu said. He guided Joshua hips towards him, un-zipping the front of his jeans, pulling down the waistband of his underwear. He pressed a kiss to Joshua's abdomen and ran his tongue over the spot, making Joshua shiver. Mingyu wondered whether a welt would form there later.

"Jeonghan is as well."

\-----------------------------------------

Grandmother sipped a lemon gin and tonic, her feet up on her son's old desk in the office beside the Pentrose's kitchen.

The curtains were open so silver opaline light poured into the space, and in the kitchen Chae-Seon was cooking "high-calorie pleasure food" for all of the staff; candied fruit kimchi, chocolate and raspberry muffins, a type of sponge cake rolled in chocolate sauce and coconut from Australia called "lamingtons", and a Sicilian dish called "Cannoli" which were like French crepes but with ricotta cream and the left-over crystalized pansy flowers.

She looked down into her notebook where she had written "AVENGER", and her heartbeat stopped for a few moments as she realized the password to her son's safety deposit box in Germany. Of course he had picked that name. In his years at high-school they were heavily educated on World War II and the German-Japanese involvement in the destruction and killings and abuse of millions and millions. History had been his best subject when he graduated. Avenger's had been Jewish anarchy who slaughtered German Nazi's guilty of war-crimes in the concertation camps. They were hero's, and completely illegal. A well-revered secret that was worth a hundred times their weight in gold.

  
"You clever, clever boy." Grandmother said to the ceiling, mildly breathless. He knew she would have been the only person to understand, never Chae-Seon or A-Yeong or Wonwoo. She quickly opened his desk draws and rifled through them, looking for the book his Father had brought for him when he was twelve years old about the history of British Allies in both World War One and World War Two. In the bottom draw, she found it.

  
"I hope she hasn't married him for his money; they looked happy enough in love, but Singaporean women you have to watch." Chae-Seon said to A-Yeong, who was indulging in a very child-hood habit of licking out the chocolate-cake mix bowl with a silicone spatula, a tea-towel over her dress while she sat up on the metal bench. Chae-Seon filled up baking cases in a muffin tray, and was still grinning from when she had offered Jihoon the bowl first, and he had practically died from shame in front of the other kitchen staff.  
"Let's hope Mr Kim has some. It's hard to tell sometimes."

  
"You know, it's crazy. I've been married to Li for so many years and we never did this before. I never really understood it. This." A-Yeong gestured around her.

  
"There's really nothing else quite like it." Chae-Seon said, warm-heatedly and knowledgeable. "Me and Jeon doing this together made us who we were."

  
"I never really understood men and emotion until I saw Jeon with you and Li came into my life."

  
"Hm, why would the two men not fall in love with the beautiful young models we are? Hm?" Chae-Seon remarked, pulling a face and rolling her eyes skyward. A-Yeong laughed.  
"No, I'm serious." She implored, a sweet expression of her aging face. "I mean, I knew how I felt about him but you and Jeon had all of this." A-Yeong gestured around her again. 

  
Chae-Seon gazed at her, felling thoughtful and human. "We did it, A-Yeong. Together." Chae-Seon gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  
"Yes, we did." A-Yeong wiped her mouth with the tea-towel. "And, the money from the wedding?"

  
"Will have the Pentrose live to fight another day." Chae-Seon put her hands on her hips. "For another month, at least."

  
A-Yeong chuckled. "You really don't care, do you? Whether it makes a penny?"

  
"Of course I do; this is all technically Wonwoo's, his name on the liscence." Chae-Seon sighed. "I want this for him, and I want it for Jihoonie even when all us old bags kick off cackling into the grave. I don't know what Bo Hyuk's doing, but he'll work it out eventually." Chae-Seon pointed to the ceiling. "That above and outside is what Jeon really loved the most. The chaos and the craziness."

  
"Maybe that's what we've been missing." A-Yeong hummed. "A little crazy."

  
"I miss him." Chae-Seon said. It made A-Yeong still smile tenderly, but it quietned her.

  
"I did fall in love with Chae-Seon, all the way back in the 70's." Jeon said, giving his wife a hug from behind even though she didn't notice it completely; she reached up to dust off her shoulder, a sudden itch or a spider there. "And between the two girls a unstoppable force met an immoveable object. A-Yeong and Chae-Seon. And that can cause problems, to say the least. But, it never seemed to, amazingly. They loved each other, too."

  
Joshua gasped as Mingyu's mouth and tongue enveloped his length, sucking on it as uplifting, spiritualistic classicla music played from a live orchestra up on the lawn, wedding guests dancing and moving and drinking happily, already drunk and high with full bellies. Joshua didn't fight as he realized he wanted this too, pressing his hands against the stone wall as he gasped, been fucked by Mingyu's mouth as sunshine began to pour over them, and Joshua felt himself falling into something he had left behind years and years ago.

\----------------------------------

"See you later, Auntie. It was magnificent." Chae-Seon smiled, her eyes slipping to a close as Jihoon kissed her cheek, and left the Pentrose for his house. Little did she know that soon he would be having a conversation with A-Yeong and Li about moving out of their mediavel-English style cottage and into the attic of the Pentrose.

  
Wonwoo collected a packet of someone's cigarettes from the dining hall floor and put it in the pocket of his jeans as the orchestra still played on, and he had a feeling the party would go to midnight. Stealing one of the cigarettes, he put it in his mouth and lighted it up, walking down through the gardens by himself, looking at the tulips and at the winter-bloomed roses.

  
"Hey, come on." Wonwoo looked down through a series of birch trees over the garden wall two stories below to the ground where a young man - about his age - he didn't recognise pulled his pants up and re-did his belt, a leather jacket on his shoulders. He felt his entire world go still as he saw Joshua completely naked figure appear, walking towards the man with the leather jacket before kissing him deeply.


	17. Old Loves And Un-Impressed Adults

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love is a choice like any other; For A-Yeong and Li, for Joshua, Wonwoo, Mingyu and Jeonghan

"That's so gross." Kwak Elizabeth pointed to her twin sister, Kwak Victoria, at the snail who had made a home in a wine-glass on the grass of the Pentrose out in the garden, and was now sleeping upside down in it, a trail of dry slime around the inside of the glass. Silk banners and flowers were still decorated everywhere as the morning bloomed dewy, warm and bright. It was five days after the huge wedding of that Singaporean woman, and it seemed that the current maids ought to lose their jobs over their cleaning up efforts.

  
Joshua lay alone in his bed, multiple blankets half strewn over the top of the duvet; a dark red wool one with a hessian coloured arm-knitted version that had been one Mingyu's sister had made for him years ago. He thought he should have thrown out the blanket ages ago when he kicked out the rest of Mingyu's stuff, but it was a good blanket at Mingyu's sister was a sweetheart. He wondered why Wonwoo hadn't come home to him last night. Joshua now felt the disturbing feeling of sleeping along when you're not in a period of life when you should be. One of Wonwo''s jumpers - a creamy coloured on - was at the end of Joshua's bed by his feet. His own clothes and shoes were scattered on the floor, a little bit of mess that could be cleaned up within five minutes. 

  
"People always talk about falling in love as if it's something you just can't control." Jeon said, having uncomfortably come to learn that if he couldn't find his eldest son in his bed at their old house, or somewhere in the Pentrose or even at A-Yeong's and Li's, the next best bed to check was the one that had been given to Joshua Hong. Jeon didn't recognise his son's sexuality, purely on the basis that he couldn't possibly be. Wonwoo was a man. He wasn't a faerie or a sulk or a total wimp with mental health issues like schizophrenia, bipolar, or other retardations. Jeon believed he must have got involved with this American-accented Joshua Hong for the experience; in itself, Jeon didn't know how he felt about his son getting himself into a situation where he could potentialy contract STD's, AID's, or syphilis. _Syphilis was making it's way back into fashion in the Western world, with condom use falling each year. Who knows what the boy in the bed might have brought with him on the aeroplane?_

  
Jeon left the room as Joshua got up and decided to dress; Jeon was sure he wasn't a particular fan of the young man, and he had no intention of staying in the room while he got dressed.

  
"Love is a choice like any other." Jeon followed Joshua as he walked through the forest along the river-bank, umbrella in hand, in a grey tank-shirt with a second one - orange - over the top, and denim cords which almost made his style look a bit effeminate, even though Jeon didn't often see girls dressing like that. Any girls that came into the Pentrose were immaculate in haute coutoure, and Elizabeth and Victoria made full uses of their generous clothing allowances with extremely French taste. "That suit you don't need; that two-seater convertible you don't need." 

  
Jeon watched sourly as Joshua let himself into the Pentrose through access to the Greenhouses with his own key, before walking through the barns, past Dino's cottage, and into the Pentrose's kitchen, up the staircase to the lobby where Wonwoo always brought out a breakfast tray with coffee for Suri, while she took him through the day's paperwork. Jeon was happy that Wonwoo got along wonderfully with Suri; he would have fucking well had to, either way.

  
"To truly fall in love...you have to want it." Jeon glared at Joshua when he approached Wonwoo who had finished breakfast with Suri, and was just coming down the stairs as they spotted each other; something had evidently happened, gone wrong. The smile Wonwoo gave didn't quite give a sense of blissful reality, and his movements were strong, almost robotic, around Joshua as they kissed, instead of been sensual and graceful. Most people didn't stick around to watch their son's kiss - especially kiss the son's of other people - but this Joshua Hong had evidently made an enormous fuck-up, and Jeon wanted to know what the hell was going on in his son's life.

  
"Like a vampire -" Jeon aimed a kick at Joshua's arse, but it didn't work. "It can only cross the threshold if you invite it in."

  
"You're wearing the watch you're Dad gave you for your eighteenth." Joshua noticed on Wonwoo's wrist. It was Omega, dark blue with silver features. A lot of money for a son worth more than any possible sum. Wonwoo took it off and let Joshua try it on, making them both laugh, Wonwoo, Jeon noticed, slightly uneasy.

  
"No, none of us just fall." Jeon continued. "We have to jump."

\-----------------------------------

"The morning has come and you have five minutes." A-Yeong brought up a cup of tea for her husband who had fallen asleep in their marriage bed last night instead of the bed in the spare room he had been banished too. A-Yeong laid out some clothes for him, and pinched his upper arm lightly. "I've got work to do."

  
"Jesus. Charming." Li replied, sitting up. "Why do you want to get rid of me?"

  
"Funny you should say that." A-Yeong opened up the curtains and the windows, gasping and commenting on how warm the air was and how sunny it was outside. 

  
"Global warming." Li said in response. "Makes you acutely aware of your own mortality."

  
A-Yeong fiddled one-handedly with a necklace around her neck, in a light-pink jersey-cotton dress, high-necked and sleeveless. It was a style she had come to really like as of late. 

  
"So, our son is moving into the attic of our best friends Hotel." Li remarked, still lying down on the pillows. "How is he?"

  
"He's happy." A-Yeong wrapped her arms around herself. She usually had her hair pinned up but today it was long and loose, and when Li looked at her he still saw the same girl from nearly thirty years ago despite her lines in her soft skin and the signs of age around her elbows.

  
"Ah, it still exists in the world." Li replied, before sneezing. "He's old enough by now. Chae-Seon and the other Jeon's can keep an eye on him. He's virtually just moved his room up the front lawn."

  
A-Yeong chuckled. "Yeah. Just like that. It's funny though, not having my baby just down the hall."

  
Li held open his arms for a hug, but instead, A-Yeong just pointed to his cup of tea on the bed-side table.

  
"I suppose I could make breakfast?" He said, turning onto his side and leaning up on his elbow, raising an eyebrow to A-Yeong who just smiled, and walked out of the room, leaving the door open.

  
A-Yeong thought as Li fried fished in the pan on the stove with a mug of coffee in his hand, still in his underpants and a shirt. She turned to say something to Jihoon - unseen by Li - and felt her heart sink when she realized that she'd have to walk up the hill to tell him what she had wanted to. It wasn't a big thing. She just wanted to ask him if he had got the chance to talk to Elizabeth, yet.

  
"Funny," Jeon said sympathetically, checking on what was going on in the Li family's cottage. He did that often over the last two months; in the morning or the afternoon, he'd check between the Pentrose, Dido's house, his old house, A-Yeong and Li's cottage, and the house that Wonwoo gave to that Joshua Hong, before going into the village to see what the councillors were doing where the Pentrose was concerned. Jeon thought Dido could sense him; yesterday he had made a breakthrough by walking into Dido's sitting room only for the bearded man from his cushion on the floor say, "You know how all us Dad's do that shuffle walk when we're checking on our kids at nighttime? You do that all the time when you come to stick your nose in. Hey, mate."

  
"When we really need to talk, the ones we love feel the furthest away." He patted A-Yeong's head, and wondered if he'd be able to whip Li's arse in his underwear with a tea-towel, but decided against it. That'd be the day that something caught fire from the stove and everyone burnt to death.

\---------------------------------------------

"Hi." Mingyu pulled up on his motorcycle, taking off his helmet.

  
"Hey." Joshua stepped down off the up-built ledge of forest where the road had been made, a cut-through.

  
"Jeonghan won't answer my calls. Can I call him on your phone?" Joshua inhaled deeply the fresh scent of the forest reminded him of the fresh scent of his skin. He was able to have one cold shower a week, less than two minutes, but it was like the soap would function as cleansing soap under the cold temperature; it never seemed to lather up and wash his skin that would smell by the third day without a single drop of water touching it. Once a week he wasn't concious anymore about the odour of his body and what people saw and thought of him as he went past; once a week he wasn't worried about Wonwoo nearly having a fit. Jeonghan - just before he met Wonwoo - had come up with an idea of using sugar or salt made into a heavy paste with some sort of oil to take care of his skin and keep him fresh. Oil wasn't exactly water, and to Joshua amazement, it had worked. It was only five minutes after they attempted the trial that they realized they would need water to get it off. Despite Jeonghan's worrying, Joshua had been in an out of the bathroom in Jeonghan's flat in fifty seconds; the water had still stung, but apart from washing the sugar off, the canola oil they had used to make the paste and virtually formed a protective coating for Joshua's skin.

  
"Oh, right. Shit...erm..." Joshua pushed some of his hair back as Mingyu fished his phone out the inside of his leather jacket. "Yeah - what's he doing that for?"

  
"Don't know." Joshua smiled gratefully but he cooled his expression as Mingyu looked back at him and gave Joshua his phone.

  
"Oh, fuck!" Joshua put the call onto speaker-phone as he rang Jeonghan and Jeonghan picked up the line. Joshua rolled his eyes at Jeonghan's reaction to his voice. "So, what's happening? You're being weird, you know, right?"

  
"Yeah." Jeonghan replied. A funny sound laugh went through the air. "I guess that makes us all infidels now."

  
Even though it was sick and it cut like a knife right through to his soul, Joshua chuckled, feeling a bit lost in the moment. "Except in Belgium." He remembered Jeonghan saying once about infidelity and incest been legal in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

  
"Yay, Belgium." Joshua said as his stomach churned with horrific butterflies. "We can be perverted aslyum seekers."

  
"Yeah, I'd like that." Mingyu ducked his head as Jeonghan and Joshua talked, looking down at the petrol and heat gage on his motorcycle, hot and fuzzy and internally awkward.   
"Great. Erm...I'll see you, then." Mingyu whispered to Joshua.

  
"Ok." Joshua said to Jeonghan, before whispering to Mingyu about whether or not he wanted his phone. Instead of Mingyu giving him a reply, Joshua leant in for his mouth to meet Mingyu's as the taller man tipped the motorcycle a bit to the side, his arse rising from the seat so he stood, kissing Joshua firmly. Mingyu nearly grinned as Joshua angled his head for a second kiss. "Ok." Joshua finished talking to Jeonghan - making him promise to talk to him - before Joshua gave the phone back to Mingyu.

  
"Ok."

  
"I'll see you." Mingyu waved, twisting the throttle of the motorcycle, making the engine fire up again.

  
"Cool." Joshua stared after Mingyu as he roared away down the gravel road on his motorcycle through the forest.

\-----------------------------------------------

"Is my taxi here? I thought I heard a door go." A-Yeong raced after Grandmother as the old lady made her way down the front stairs of the guest entrance to the Pentrose, a black suitcase in her hand.

  
"Where are you going so I can tell Chae-Seon?" A-Yeong asked.

  
"A coach trip." Grandmother replied.

  
"Here? Gyreyeongsan?" A-Yeong questioned.

  
"No, my dear. An odeyssey through the arhcitecture of Berlin, Cologne and Dresden." Grandmother replied.

  
"You're going overseas?!" A-Yeong nearly shrieked. "But you never mentioned this to Chae-Seon."

  
"Terminal Alzheimer's, no doubt. These things can sneak up on you, apparently." Grandmother touched her temple. "I forget who told me."

  
A-Yeong looked down the stairs as a taxi pulled up and honked it's horn. "Oh, finally!" Grandmother waved down.

  
"But how long will you be?" A-Yeong clambered down the stairs after the old lady. Chae-Seon would be going ballistic by now, she thought as the old woman stared at her drily.  
"That's a ridiculous question that I'm going to treat as rhetorical." Grandmother said coldly. "Give my love to Wonwoo and Bo Hyuk who his Mother realizes has buggered off back to Japan two days ago?"

  
A-Yeong stared after her as she stepped into the back seat of the taxi, and it drove away, leaving A-Yeong in the company of the door-men and a thoroughly un-impressed looking Dido who informed her about something throwing baby nappies full of shit over the side fence by the entrance drive-way to the vineyard.


	18. Love Gone Wrong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo and Jihoon had a "discussion" about The Beatles, what makes true love, and "keeping your cock in your pants", while Dido attacks Joshua and Grandmother makes her way for the Deutchland

Wonwoo's depressed and anxious mood improved ten-fold as he walked into the Pentrose kitchen and he saw Jihoon cooking pancakes. "Mum, there's a strange short man in the kitchen who slept in the attic last night and I don't think he's one of cousin Victoria's." Wonwoo called out.

  
Jihoon grinned as Chae-Seon's wild cackle of laughter filled the air. "Morning, _hyung_." Jihoon greeted him. "Too, don't go up there unless you want to see a chick with a round bum and no bra." he teased.

  
Wonwoo's mouth fell open in shock for a moment before he began to piss himself laughing. "Chick?" He questioned. "Newsflash - the Beatles split up, John's dead, George is dead, and Paul is someone's Grandad." He leant against the bench with his hands holding onto the edge of the metal either side of him. 

  
"Shit." Jihoon immaculately acted, feigning shock. "What about Ringo?"

  
"Ringo lives. I think." Wonwoo replied, raising his eyebrows.

  
"Always been heroes of mine. Get yourself some talented friends and just coast -" Jihoon flung the spoon he used for the batter outwards in a gesture, but making an arc of pancake batter in the process that Wonwoo dived out of the way to miss. 

  
"Shit, don't tell Auntie." Jihoon hunched his shoulders, keeping his mouth shut as he snickered and Wonwoo quickly dived for a tea-towel to clean up any obvious mess of them two fucking about.

  
"Inspiring, you should be a teacher." Wonwoo put the towel over his shoulder like he saw his Mum, Li and Jihoon do, and hugged Jihoon from behind as the younger man turned the pancake over with a spatula. Jihoon hated getting cuddled and prodded about but sometimes he didn't mind it. This morning was one of those days.

  
"Your Mum pays me more money doing this." Jihoon said. "I get paid to have fun. How awesome, yeah?"

\-------------------------------------

"Ah." Joshua turned around quickly to see Dido walking into the cafe. Mingyu came in to get a coffee from the same Hanok-conversaion where Joshua was doing their accounting and other book-work. Joshua could tell Mingyu wasn't purposely invading his space. it was Jeonghan that did that as a rule. Joshua tucked the pencil behind his ear and quickly handed Mingyu his cofee, ntoable in a take-away mug and not a latte glass. "You two know each other then?" Dido said. "Looks like you've been catching up." Dido squarely noticed the flush on Joshua's face. He had had a dream earlier while having a smoke where Jeon said to him about Wonwoo having a relationship with the "Umbrella boy". Dido agreed.

  
"Shouldn't you be with Wonwoo at the Pentrose?" Dido remarked.

  
"Sorry if I'm in your way." Mingyu didn't move an inch, sipping his coffee through the lid, but invited Dido to get his "Lunch". Mingyu knew Dido's kind a mile off; and fuck, they were a problem to him usually.

  
"So, how did you two kids to meet?" Dido grinned, grabbing an apple off the fruit-bowl on the counter. His eyes widened happily as he took a bite out of it, and Joshua knew that day was going to end terribly.

\---------------------------------------

"You know, with Joshua..." Jihoon asked Wonwoo, peeling potatoes as he ate his pancakes, Chae-Seon having gone out to the gardens to kill one of Dido's tradesmen when she found that no hot water was coming from the taps in the kitchen, and Wonwoo had been left to ring for a plumber. "...how did you know it was love and not just, you know, something else?"

  
"Is this with Elizabeth?" Wonwoo asked, waiting for his Mother to come back so he could tell her the time the plumber was coming from the village and how much it would be. He chipped in with peeling the poatoes; there were three enormous hessian sacks to do.

  
"No...no, no, no." Jihoon said, blushing. "I just mean in general, if you're alright with saying."

  
"When you're with someone you love you don't even consider an alternative. Life without them, waking up without them beside you in the morning - that's when it's love, real love. When it's real, there's no other option. It's all about them and them in your life." Wonwoo explained. "In real love there has to be trust, acceptance, a bit of integrity. Just a bit of it in you so you know to do the right thing by the other person. You sure there's not someone there?" Wonwoo smiled at Jihoon. "Someone whose name isn't "Elizabeth"?"  
Jihoon shrugged, shaking his head. "Don't laugh, but I thought I might write a book." He confessed, completely avoiding Wonwoo's sight. "I know a ton of people have written a book about life but I thought I might do it...someday."

  
"Thank God, for a second I thought one of the vegetables from the village had lured you in." Wonwoo replied. Jihoon couldn't help the snort of laughter that came out from him.  
"That's not very nice about our pretty young ladies of the mountain." Jihoon said, taking the piss. 

  
"Fuck being nice." Wonwoo reached for more potatoes, tipping a chopping board towering high with peel into the bin that went out to the compost. "How long has it been? About the book?"

\----------------------------------

"You sure I can't give you a lift?"

  
"No, it's ok. I'd rather walk."

  
"So..." Dido stuck his hand about, Joshua's mid-riff running into it. "He seems cool. Your...friend. In a masculine gay kind of straight way." Dido said. Joshua was frozen. "What's he really doing here?"

  
"Why are you bothering me?" Joshua managed.

  
"Because you're doing shit that is bothering my mate's son who is now in charge of a big property worth a hundred times your weight in gold." Dido replied chummily.

  
"He came to see me. We haven't seen each other for years." Joshua said.

  
"It's a bit weird the second he turns up the second Wonwoo's heart gets broken." Dido remarked.

  
"You don't even know what you're saying." Joshua said.

  
"I think you're coffee-mate fancies you and you've had his cock up your arse quite recently. I don't quite think you're after Wonwoo's money, but, trust me, you wouldn't want to be." Dido grinned in a manner that made Joshua uncomfortable. Dido let Joshua walk away down the street, enough torture implemented.

\----------------------------------------

"Leave it, leave it." Grandmother swatted away the hands of thr taxi driver as he went to get her suitcase from the boot of the vehicle. She pulled it out herself.  
"Scotland, nice holiday." He said. "Got any plans?"

  
"Downhill mountain biking." Grandmother responded.

  
"You're travelling light, then."

  
"Yes, that would be the carbon fibre." Grandmother pulled up the handle of the suitcase, pushing it's wheels as the man tried to hand her a business card. 

  
"Thank you very much but I've organized alternative arrangements." She walked away from the taxi up the ramp to the airport entrance, feeling irritated and jittery.

\-----------------------------------------

"Joshua is my partner and I am responsible for him being on this estate." Wonwoo said in repsonse to Jihoon when Jihoon had replied that Joshua ought to be punched in the face. "I said to Mum and A-Yeong that I take care of the land maitenance with Dido's help, plus the leases of the cottages. That's why Joshua is around. I haven't told anyone about him, but I've -"

  
"Secretly given him a £800,000 house?" Jihoon finished. Wonwoo held up his hands.

  
"And there is no way I can deal with this properly without it been a fucking disaster." Wonwoo sighed. "I think Dido's been a bit suspicious - fuck, he must know. He saw Joshua at the twins birthday and he saw him when Dad's funeral was here and I needed Joshua, and he must have seen Joshua in the village; that's before this guy was suddenly getting the house by the river and...yeah." Wonwoo fell hopeless. "No one else can find out, and no one else has the right to know - I don't want anyone to know. It just creates a problem."

  
"He's cheated on you." Jihoon said, trying to get some common sense into Wonwoo.

  
"But I cheated on him too. I kissed his best friend, Jeonghan."

  
"Fucking hell, really?" Jihoon slammed his palms down flat onto the metal bench. "Christ, Wonwoo! What is wrong with you - and Joshua?! It doesn't make any sense of why the two of you would do this if you're both happy together."

  
"I know what I saw." Wonwoo said. "I know I kissed Jeonghan, told Josha, made him fly off the handle about it, and then suddenly there's this other guy. I saw this guy at the bottom of the garden on the west side getting his jacket on, and then Joshua's figure - naked - walking to him and then they were kissing."

  
"Have you actually talked to Joshua about this? You realize he's tried to make you feel the same way he did when he found out that _you kissed his best friend_." Jihoon said forcefully. "Honestly, I think you're both idiots for doing this to each other."


	19. Tongue-Tied

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All hell breaks loose in this chapter as A-Yeong fires up in a bid to protect Chae-Seon and the Pentrose from matters formed by Wonwoo, Grandmother gets down to business in Germany, and Jihoon tries to mediate Wonwoo through the process of telling the truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, there's a few things I want to explain, namely, why I have made Wonwoo's character so against been openly gay and been virtually a straight individual that has been designed to have homosexual relations. 
> 
> In Korea - and most of East Asia - homosexuality is a taboo subject. And particularly in families that are a higher-class, having a homosexual son can cause a massive drama. In Korean culture, in a matter like this, it's never quite about the child and his/her happiness. In the story, Wonwoo is the oldest son and the inheriting son of a mutli-million pound estate, business, restaurant, farm and vineyard. There is reputation, family name, honour, and a lot of money to lose; the stakes where duty and honour and culture are concerned are sky high. And most people won't believe it, but this is how some people who identity as gay live. They don't talk about it, they don't want to talk about it, they purely want to be left to their own devices.
> 
> It's fair to say that most gay men and lesbian women - for example - have similar behaviours. It's never just sexuality; it's always something more. But, depending on how a gay/lesbian child is raised, there is a significant impact and change to how he/she will act within their sexuality and their family/friend/business life therefore as they grow.
> 
> In this chapter I also want to point out the significance of choice by an individual; the choice to "come out" or the choice of privacy

"Guten tag." Grandmother looked at a German man in a suit as she followed a middle-aged one with a clearance security tag around his neck as she followed him through a hallway on the third floor of the bank. 

  
"You understand the decision you're about to make is irrevocable?" The man said to her in English.

  
Grandmother scoffed, her arms crossed. "Does one need a degree to state the obvious?"

  
"You are alone?" The bank's manager asked her. "I assume you have discussed this with your immediate family?"

  
"We think that this is the right choice for all of us."

  
"Well...in that case I need you to sign here." The man pushed forward a document across the table; there were three copies, written in German, English, and Korean.

  
"And then?" Grandmother checked.

  
"We can proceed immediately."

\------------------------------------------

"Of course there's a very obvious solution. You and Joshua tell each other the truth and then you tell everyone us that you are gay or at least straight-but-with-an-interest-on-the-side. " Jihoon crossed his arms, walking along with Wonwoo as he pushed a wheelbarrow of firewood. "And tell them they if they could not discuss it and make a fuss because you don't want that you would appreciate it. I don't think anyone would carry on about it like the Americans do; have a Mardi Gras party."

  
Wonwoo glared at Jihoon.

  
"You and Joshua aren't brothers; it's not incest. At the worst, you're just very confused about where the lines of respect in a relationship and keeping-it-in-your-pants meet."  
"So, that's it?" Wonwoo commented sardonically. "I've been lying to you and not talking about it since I was thirteen years old, and by the way, here's your future "daughter-in-law"." He groaned. "Oh, no, Jihoon....no. I don't know what to do."

  
"Yes, you do. You just don't want to. Talk to our family about it."

  
"I won't be able to do this alone. I have to do it in a way everyone would consider decent. Oh -" Wonwoo put the wheelbarrow down with a thump. "Can't you fucking see I'm not "Gay", Jihoon?" Wonwoo said. "I don't want to be recognized as that either! Most gay men are cunts or they're retarded! And me and Josh liking our own gender and doing our stuff - that hasn't given much good to the opinion either, but still!"

  
"Ok, ok, Wonwoo, calm down." Jihoon sighed. "Ok. I get that it's your choice and it's what you...yeah. Just call me when it's time."

  
"Some people cannot stand confrontation." Jeon said, looking down from the roof-top of the Pentrose at the ant-size figures of his son and Jihoon. "Others embrace it."  
Wonwoo walked out of the Greenhouses as Jihoon's Mother's figure came moving across the lawn towards him, waving her arm.

  
"But, sometimes, you just can't avoid it. Especially when it's coming from a woman as good as your Aunt."

  
"Hi." Wonwoo said cautiously. A-Yeong's face was full of thunderous rage. Mum and her must have had a argument and she's been hit with a hot pan or something, Wonwoo thought.

  
"I need to talk to you."

  
"Ok. What about?" Wonwoo shut the door to the Greenhouses, and leant against it as A-Yeong looked around quickly, not staying still as she walked around on the grass.  
"Is anyone else here?"

  
"No, Dido's pruning the trees at you and Li's place. Why?"

  
"Where were you at the end of Helena's wedding party a few nights ago, Wonwoo?" A-Yeong asked.

  
"Erm...I don't know." Wonwoo wondered why A-Yeong was asking him this.

  
"Who were you with?" She advanced towards him, her hands buried deep into the elbows of her crossed arms. A-Yeong sounded slightly breathless as she spoke, and her cheekbones were flushed a dark pink.

  
"Uh...Jihoon." Wonwoo said.

  
"Liar." A-Yeong replied, correctly.

  
"You were with a boy, Wonwoo, who apparently you've rented a house too along the river that goes through the south of the Estate but he won't be paying any rent."  
"You and Dido have had a chat then about something that is neither you or his business under terms that are legalized, signed, and sitting in a solicitors office?" Wonwoo leant against the door of the Greenhouses as A-Yeong's mouth fell open.

  
"I just want to know what it going on, Wonu." A-Yeong rested her hands on her hips. She looked close to crying. 

  
"What did we do?" Wonwoo spoke to her. "We talked, we drank some of the wine, we smoked, and we fucked about a bit dancing to Dexie's Midnight Runners in the courtyard where the deliveries come in." Wonwoo said. "I'm not gay, and neither is Joshua. We're close; he's my best friend. He means as much to me as you and Li do to Mum and Dad. I offered to him about coming to live down here in the countryside because here he can have a better life. He has a really serious medical condition - anaphylaxis related. It's not contagious or that. Out of Seoul and it's pollution and it's over-crowded streets; out of the chaos. He's a book-keeper; a bit like Suri. A-Yeong, that's about it."

  
"Do you kiss each other? Do you sleep with each other?" A-Yeong said after a few moments.

  
Wonwoo stared at her. "A-Yeong, what do you think -"

  
"Why did you just say then that you're not gay and this boy isn't gay but you're close and he lives here?" A-Yeong repeated.

  
"What you're asking me is absolutely disgusting and I'm not even going to grace that with an answer." Wonwoo said firmly, feeling anger rise in him.

  
"Dido sees you and this boy." A-Yeong replied, a shudder visibly running through her body.

  
Wonwoo looked up at the sky, not able to quite believe that this was happening to him right now from A-Yeong.

  
"Joshua's helping me through things with Dad, ok?" Wonwoo said, lying again, though there was a tiny bit of truth amongst the bullshit and the veils hiding the real matters.  
"No, the way you are with him. How you move, how you look, how you are with each other." A-Yeong closed her eyes, shaking her head.

  
"Just shut up, A-Yeong. I'm not telling you bullshit, and I'm not making a problem for the rest of us." Wonwoo nearly yelled.

  
"Look, I understand this has been a difficult time for you; you're feeling confused and you're got millions of pounds to control and run in property and vineyards and everything we made. But I know you, Wonwoo. You're as good as my son. I know this isn't you."

  
"And you thought you knew your husband but we went and fucked the nanny you had years ago for Jihoon." Wonwoo replied harshly."And I know and Mum knows that you kissed Dad at the Village harvest festival five years ago, and last year when that Japanese guy was here, how friendly you got with him. Don't you dare try to involve yourself or any of us with rumors of my morality, sexuality, relationships and life. Go home A-Yeong, and please don't talk to anyone about this because you do not understand."

  
Wonwoo suddenly fell speechless and hopeless and weak, nearly apologising, as A-Yeong stormed across the gardens to the field beyond where her car was parked on the dirt lane that went across the frozen ground. 

  
"Shit." He said as A-Yeong reversed brutally in the vehicle and did a 360-degreee wheel spin, before the engine revved as loud as a Formula 1 car as she sped off across the Estate.


	20. Chaos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whole worlds explode and collide; directly continued from previous chapter

"You ever get that feeling you're about to do something or you've done something that you'll regret? Either way, you know you just can't or couldn't have stopped yourself." Jeon watched as Wonwoo ran inside and screamed for Jihoon about needing to borrow his helmet and his motorcycle, it was an emergency with Josh.

  
Joshua drew the curtains open in his bedroom at his house by the river, to see Mingyu's familiar figure on his motorcycle riding down the road towards the river-bank in the distance.

  
"This boy and that one on the motorcycle, plus the best friend with the blonde hair - put in my own son, Wonwoo, and Jihoon. They're never going to work it out." Jeon looked drily at Joshua, sitting on his bed. "But you knew that, right? They all think they are in control, and that it can be sorted out, mended, hidden, kept a secret. But the grenade has already been thrown."

  
Wonwoo turned off the motorcycle engine and ran to Joshua's front door, finding it un-open. As he ran across the threshold and made for the staircase, he saw Joshua staring down at him over the railing.

  
"I'm so sorry." He said breathlessly. "A-Yeong - Jihoon's mother -"

  
"Are you ok?" Joshua asked, quickly coming down the stairs. 

  
"No."

  
"What's the problem?" Joshua said as Wonwoo gazed down at him and held his forearms. Wonwoo's hands slipped down to hold onto Joshua's as A-Yeong's car sped and skidded on the front cream gravel outside, and next thing she was storming towards the front door.

  
"I want to talk to you." She said to Joshua.

  
"What's going on?" He looked at Wonwoo nervously as fiery anger embodied the woman before him.

  
"A-Yeong -"

  
"Come with me." A-Yeong interjected, her words directed at Joshua as she grabbed his arm. Joshua let out a hiss of pain, and shoved A-Yeong over into the doorframe of the front door as he fought to get out of her grasp.

  
"For Christ's sake!" Wonwoo yelled. "Stop being so stupid, A-Yeong!"

  
"What the fuck is your problem?" Joshua exclaimed as A-Yeong grabbed at his arm again and dragged him outside.

  
"My problem?" She hissed, tugging harder on Joshua's arm making him exclaim more; Wonwoo wondered if for the first time in his life he was ready to properly punch a woman.

"Fuck, that's good coming from you! He told me."

  
"Who told you?"

  
"Dido, our gardener. Wonwoo, Jeon and Chae-Seon's son - the one you've been screwing for whatever fucked-up reason!"

  
"Let go of me." Joshua said.

  
"Uh-uh." A-Yeong snarled. "You were seen so don't try and deny it to me, now."

  
"You are crazy!" Joshua pulled his arm out of A-Yeong's grasp.

  
"Don't you get it? I know what's happening! He told me! All of it!" As A-Yeong screamed, Joshua looked around, horrified, at Wonwoo, who just stood there, burning like rum on a fire.

  
"You don't understand -" Joshua began, but A-Yeong slapped him hard across his face.

  
"Liar!" She shrieked. "He told me! So don't try and pretend that you're a freak after Jeon and Chae-Seon's money because he's dead and Wonwoo now has everything! That's all you are here for and he is blind -!"

  
"That's not true." Joshua held his hand to his face where A-Yeong had hit him. "Tell her that's not true." His heart ripped itself into shreds as Wonwoo stayed silent, breathing heavily, and the sound of another motorcycle engine filled the air.

  
"What? You think he loves you?" A-Yeong challenged Joshua. "Why on earth would he want anything to do with someone like you -?!"

  
"That's enough. Get off him. That's enough!" Mingyu roared, getting off his motorcycle and throwing his helmet as hard as he could at the woman's head. It hit her cleanly in the head, making her double over with a loud, pained groan. Joshua's chest rose and fell heavily as he stood back from the scene, and another man that Mingyu knew to be Wonwoo just stared at him.

  
"You ok?" Mingyu said to Joshua, putting his arm around him.

  
"This is none of your business!" Wonwoo yelled as A-Yeong straightened up and shrieked at Mingyu about who the hell he was.

  
"I was his partner." Mingyu said. All of them went silent, even A-Yeong. Joshua couldn't breathe properly as his arm ached from where A-Yeong had gripped it so firmly. He looked to his feet before he across the driveway and out onto the main, tears burning his eyes and then burning his skin and body as they fell, soaking down his cheeks and neck and through his shirt as he ran for the Forest.


	21. Lies Bite You On The Arse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonwoo and Jihoon rush to Joshua, Chae-Seon nearly has a head-long car-crash with A-Yeong, and Joshua does the worst thing that someone with Aquagenic Uritcaria can do; have a bath

"Like they say, lies will get you a long way in life." Jeon said, as that boy called Joshua cried in the forest, in agony as his skin began to weep and bleed, and his wife Chae-Seon relaxed in the kitchen of the Pentrose with a cup of tea, not time yet for the evening service of the restaurant. "But, one day, they'll bite you on the arse." Jeon looked down and decided to go into the forest with Joshua as Wonwoo climbed the Pentrose stairs to the attic, and found Jihoon watching the TV.

  
"Jesus fucking Christ!" Jihoon exclaimed five minutes later of silence as Wonwoo had explained everything to him. "How the hell could you let her hit Joshua? It doesn't matter if she's my Mum! If you really loved Joshua you should have done something - Dad wouldn't care if you hit her when she was having a mental episode like that! And, all this after everything we talked about." Jihoon scoffed, burying his face in his hands for a few moments. He let up the gesture as Wonwoo sat beside him on the couch, and leaned heavily into his side.

  
"Stay here." Jihoon said.

  
"What do you mean?" Wonwoo sat up suddenly as Jihoon collected his helmet and jacket that Wonwoo had returned only minutes ago.

  
"I'm getting your Mum and we're sorting this out as you cannot." Jihoon replied loudly.

  
"Jeon and Li men have a particularly flexible relationship with the truth." Jeon told Joshua as the exhausted young man sunk down onto the ground, leaning against a tree, his shirt stained with blood and weep as his face and neck had blistered and looked hideously irritated and painful. He followed Joshua as he got up after a while, and he made his way back to the empty house that Wonwoo had given him. "Some would say it's the secret to our success." He continued much after as Joshua ran hot, hot water into the bath-tub in the bathroom upstairs.

  
Jeon faltered before vanishing as Joshua stripped off his clothes. He wasn't staying for that.

  
Joshua hesitated, a fresh set of tears burning his skin as he stepped into the water. He hissed, not from the temperature of the water but as it enveloped him as he quickly sat down, and slid along the bottom of the tub to be reclined in the water. He clung to the sides of the bath-tub, anguishedly shrieking at the combined pain of his heart and of his skin; he couldn't breathe properly, and the water above his thighs, legs, chest and stomach began to turn pink as his skin blistered and bled. All he could hear was a record playing on the player; "Tears" by Kevin Dodd. "Must confess, must confess, must confess..." played over and over again from where the track on the record had ended but the tooth of the rod was still put on the third track of the "A" side.

  
Wonwoo's weight was easy to balance on the motorcycle as Jihoon steered it down the mountain's roads, Chae-Seon following in the second of her late husband's Rolls Royce's behind them as they maneouvered their way down the mountain's roads.

  
"Mum!" Jihoon yelled out inside his helmet as he quickly steered the motorcycle to a slower speed and running it into a cliff of forest beside the road as suddenly his Mother's car appeared out of nowhere on the wrong side of the road, stopping three feet away from the bonnet of Chae-Seon's citroen. Tyre marks from the brakes were left on the road, and next moment, Wonwoo and Jihoon were putting the visors up on their helmets as Chae-Seon and A-Yeong rushed out of thier vehicles.

  
"God, A-Yeong!" Chae-Seon yelled. "What the hell is going on - you nearly killed our kids!" She gestured wildly at Wonwoo and Jihoon on the motorcycle.

  
A-Yeong just shrieked. "You have no idea what is going on!"

  
"Move the car, Mum!" Jihoon yelled. "For God's sake! We need to get to Joshua, just move the car."

  
"I'm telling Li what a maniac you are!" Wonwoo chipped in. 

  
"God, it's like breathing to you!" A-Yeong responded to Wonwoo. "One lie after another."

  
"Just get out of the way!" Chae-Seon protested. "Wonwoo told me everything. You hit this boy, and you dragged him out of his house and accused him of all sorts of stuff -"  
"Liar!" A-Yeong pointed at Wonwoo.

  
"You hit him!" Chae-Seon yelled. "Get out of my way!"

  
"Oh, fuck this." Wonwoo held on tight to Jihoon as he revved the engine on the bike and sped away, dodging around Chae-Seon and A-Yeong's cars.

  
"Josh!" Wonwoo yelled, un-locking the front door with a spare set of keys he had brought with him. No reply came. "Joshua!" 

  
"Listen to that." Jihoon pointed to the ceiling of the sitting room as the mournful drone of "must confess, must confess, must confess..." played loudly. A stuck record.  
Wonwoo and Jihoon ran up the stairs, Jihoon calling Joshua's name. The top half of the house was filled with steam, as Jihoon hammered his fist on a lock door while Wonwoo checked the bedrooms.

  
"I think he's in here." Jihoon stood out of the way as Wonwoo tried to shoulder the door open, before kicking at the handle and it's locks teeth in the door-jam, utterly destroying the door and pulling it off its hinges as the force of his kick broke it down. Jihoon pulled the rod off of the record, stopping the horrible sound. It was only when Wonwoo opened a window, and swore, did Jihoon see Joshua's naked and unconcious body lying in a bath-tub filled to the brim with boiling hot water.

  
"Josh, come on, no, you don't." Jihoon stood by as Wonwoo lifted Joshua's body out of the water, completely limp in his arms. Joshua's chest didn't rise and fall, indicating breathing. "No, you don't."

  
Jihoon hissed in pain as he reached into the hot water and helped Wonwoo get Joshua out of the water. Jihoon sat Joshua's lower half on the ground, trying not to look at the terrible state of his body as Wonwoo held him, talking to him.

  
"Joshua, come on, babe, plese, wake up. Joshua, Joshua..." Wonwoo stroked Joshua's head back from his face, getting his phone out of his pocket to call an ambulance.

\--------------------------------------------

Chae-Seon pulled her phone out of her jeans as A-Yeong screamed about gold-diggers, homosexuals, what Jeon would think, and the family name, plus the Pentrose and its fraud investigation and how she doesn't care at all that Grandmother had vanished off to Western Europe.

  
"The boys are in the village hospital; the other one is been taken to a hospital in Doensan city. He's unconcious and had a heart-attack and he's not breathing." Chae-Seon cut through. A-Yeong swayed dangerously.

  
"Get in my car. Just get in the car." She said to Chae-Seon.


	22. Intensive Care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua lays unconscious in a hospital bed as Jihoon sets the record straight with his Mother, and Chae-Seon believes her son will never forgive her as the man laying the hospital bed just might not be alright

Wonwoo felt absolutely sick as he waited in the hallway of the Intensive Care Ward, Jihoon beside him, talking to him softly occasionally when it seemed the younger man could sense when Wonwoo's heartbeat went through the roof. Wonwoo didn't look up from the ground as his Mother, A-Yeong, and Li appeared into the ward.

  
"Darling -"

  
"Don't you even start. Any of you." Jihoon said to Chae-Seon, before looking at his parents. "Everything you see here now and back at home is all your fault. Learn - all of you - to shut the fuck up."

  
"Hong?" A female nurse appeared in the hallway. "Hong family?"

  
"Oh, shit..." Li murmured softly.

  
"Yes." Chae-Seon said, pressing her hand to her chest as she lied, and the nurse guided her through into the room where Joshua was.

  
"His allergy means he has suffered severe anaphylatic shock." Chae-Seon stared down at a intensely pretty boy with raw, blistered skin across every inch of every avaible part to see. IV drips and machines were connected by wires and tubes into his arms, and into his mouth. "The adrenaline will have helped but if his brain was starved of oxygen there could be serious damage. For the time being he is in a natural coma." Even though Chae-Seon had never laid her eyes before on this human being in her life - she was sure - she bent over and kissed his forehead, entwining her hand with his. Where were his parents and family?

  
"He's going to be alright, though, isn't he? That's what you're saying - he's going to be alright?" Chae-Seon said, panicking, to the nurse.

  
"It's impossible to say, I'm sorry." The nurse bowed and left. Chae-Seon sat down on one of the chairs beside the boys bed, and stroked her thumb over the inside of his wrist. She saw his upper arm was black and blue with bruises, and so was the side of his face. It looked absolutely hideous, the bruising he suffered due to A-Yeong's punch.

  
"This is Joshua Hong." Wonwoo's voice said softly. He sat on the edge of the hospital bed by the unconscious boy's hip, pressing his hand flat but gently to Joshua's chest. Wonwoo's eyes were wet and tender, but his face was completely cold. "I'm not gay; I'm not any of that shit. You should know that. But...this is Joshua, and he's...the love of my life. And if I have to fucking fight you on this like I did with that psychotic bitch -" He seethed over A-Yeong. "- outside, well..." Chae-Seon winced at the pure anger and grief and menace in her child's tone. "That's fucking that. I own everything; you don't."

  
"Your Father and I never thought -" Chae-Seon began, but Wonwoo cut her off brutally.

  
"I don't give a fuck." He said simply. "I cannot give less a fuck than I do right now. Josh might die, or else be a vegetable for the rest of his life because he's brain damaged. I don't give a fuck what you or that bastard thinks. Leave us alone, and do it always. I'm not leaving him, and he's not leaving me. You and A-Yeong can shut the fuck up, and make one comment I will sell everything and move to America with Josh and he can be near his family who can't be here right now because they are five thousand miles away. Can you not see how much pain I'm in right now all because of what you lot have done?"

\----------------------------------------------

"Nice going, Mum." Jihoon said, as they both leaned against the car outside in the public car-park while Li waited inside the hospital. "Just because Joshua is a guy as well as me and Wonwoo and Dad and Jeon....you have no idea how...beautiful they are - when Wonwoo and Josh are together. It's beautiful...and it's right." He said slowly. A-Yeong looked at him, tears slipping down her face.

  
"When Dido told you...no way did he mean it like that. Dido doesn't hold spite, or hate, or anger - except towards car salesman, farmers, the government, the tax man and estate agents. He's a bit of a old hippie; spiritual like Auntie Chae-Seon. He sees the hierarchy and the culture and what it is to not just be close to the Jeons, but to be the Jeons. Wonwoo would have kept it up, and you know that, yeah? Wonwoo could have easily kept this up for another fifty years. He was trying to tell you to tell Chae-Seon so Wonwoo wouldn't have...that trauma of doing it, I guess."

  
A-Yeong shook her head. "That's what he said. How precious they are." She hiccuped. "But he said that Joshua was cheating on Wonwoo with someone on a motorcycle - tall, tall man. That's why I exploded. I love Wonwoo as much as I love you; Chae-Seon is my best friend. Like my sister. I thought Joshua was using him, using the land, the houses, the money, and all the while was betraying him."

  
"You're right." Jihoon tucked his hands into his pockets. "Joshua is cheating on Wonwoo, but Wonwoo cheated on him. Had his best friend in the forest. Mingyu - tall guy, motorbike - was Joshua's revenge for the agony Wonwoo put him through. You and Dido were right, Mum, but...it's time to stop the deceit. All of us. Dad cheating on you, Jeon dying and leaving Wonwoo and Chae-Seon and you with debt, a fraud investigation, and other shit. Wonwoo kissing people he shouldn't, and Joshua sleeping with others to get back. Kwak Elizabeth still dating a guy even though he cheats on her and I can't tell her he's a prick because Kwak Victoria won't let me see Lizzie. It's time for all of it to stop." Jihoon opened up his arms and hugged his Mother, thinking it strange how when he was twelve years old, when he hugged her he came to her chest. And at the age of twenty-two, now, he still came to her chest.

\------------------------------------------

A-Yeong knocked on the door to Joshua's hospital room, before coming in, a coffee in her hands. She knew the way Wonwoo liked it; it was the same way Li made his. Wonwoo looked up at her, as she held out the coffee for him. He took it from her grasp, but didn't drink from it.

  
"The things I said..." A-Yeong whispered, feeling frail. "To him." She sat down in the second chair by Joshua's bed. "They were things I should never have said about you or about him. I just want you to know how sorry I am." She gazed at Wonwoo as he sat, hunched-shoulder, looking at Joshua. The agony that ripped through her was immense at a memory that came to the surface; that was how her Father had looked at her Mother's dead body, the best part of thirty years ago.

  
"Nothing excuses what I did, or what I said -"

  
"Everyone lies, and does things." Wonwoo suddenly spoke, but it was hoarse and deep and quiet. "I lie, Dad lied, Grandmother lies. It's so hard to talk to you, Mum, Dad before he died, Li, and Jihoon because I have lied for so long I don't know what the truth is anymore." Wonwoo sighed. He sat back in his chair, crossing his legs, inclining his body towards A-Yeong.

  
"I've had five boyfriends, Joshua included. Mum and Dad didn't notice, working all hours. I worried that you, Li, Jihoon, or Bo Hyuk might notice. Grandmother wasn't living with us yet; Grandfather hadn't died. Two years ago I met Joshua. I had never seen anyone as beautiful as him. He was cheeky but sensible, a terrible rapper; funny, has a good job, he's clever. The whole package. I nearly collapsed everytime he would look at me with that sparkle in his eyes; like how Dad used to look at Mum and you." Wonwoo smiled tenderly, looking at Joshua. "I got to know him for a good three months before I brought him here. He was amazed, ecstatic, and never wanted a bit of it. I knew he was the one that most people miss out on in their lives. And there is the truth."

  
"What about Jihoon?"

  
"He knew I had someone, but he only clapped eyes properly on Josh for the first time at Lizzie and Victoria's birthday party. Josh was under that huge black umbrella. _Aquagenic Urticaria_. Allergy to water." Wonwoo pointed at Joshua's skin. "Jihoon and I found him in a bath-tub nearly over-flowing. All this time I wanted to protect him. Josh."

  
A-Yeong walked out of the room, leaving Joshua and Wonwoo in peace. Li and Jihoon were waiting outside in the car to take her back to the Pentrose. Chae-Seon was staying at the hospital. And little did they know, that Jeon was as well.

  
"There's something about the truth..." Jeon sat beside his son in the second chair. "That cleanses the palate. Leaves you ready for the second course. But, sometimes, you don't get a second chance."

  
Chae-Seon came into the hospital room with blankets she had gotten off a nurse; she gave one to Wonwoo, before sitting on the edge of Joshua's bed, as the Midnight came around them.


	23. "Father-In-Law"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, Joshua did die. There have been many elements of this book that have been spiritualistic and will continue to be so, that's why I wanted to write this particular bit. Don't fear, there's a happy ending, despite some coarse words from Jeon Senior

Joshua woke up, blinking dry eyes as he opened them, staring up at the bedroom ceiling of his master bedroom in the house by the rivers. Music, and laughter, chatter and shrieks along with the clanking of metal cooking pots and a woman's voice that ran like Hitler's had been the noises that had woken him up. He was alone in the bed, Wonwoo not with him. Neither Mingyu or even Jeonghan. Joshua looked in the direction from of his bedroom door, and saw that it was wide open for him. He looked down at himself and realized that he was dressed in a grey t-shirt and olive-coloured cords, his feet bare. He got out of bed and wandered downstairs. There was a party in full-blown swing; the Kwak twins, the Li family, Dido with a young girl about seventeen in his arms, all of the Jeons plus the villagers and friends Joshua assumed were to do with the Kwak girls. Joshua's eyes found Wonwoo, who smiled at him. As Joshua navigated his way through the crowd in the kitchen, sitting room, dining room and hallway, he instead found himself outside in the garden at the river-bank, looking to the seemingly ressurected from the dead Jeon sitting in a blue and white striped deck chair. He was wearing a beige coloured linen suit, Italian leather shoes, and his tie...Joshua spotted a little girl running around with a grey on around her head like a bandanna.

  
Joshua sat down on the grass beside Jeon; the older man smiled as he noticed him.

  
"What's all this?" Joshua pointed to the party around him.

  
"You're twenty-fourth birthday party, isn't it?" Jeon leant back in the lounge chair, propping his chin up on his hand, his elbow on the chair's arm.

  
"...Do you like it?" Joshua asked.

  
"I'd hope so, since I'm paying for it. Do you like it?" Jeon remarked. Joshua nodded, smiling a little, but it faltered.

  
"It wasn't like this a little while ago. I did something really stupid. I had a bath." At Joshua's words, Jeon laughed. "The next thing I know, I'm not wet, I have clothes on and it's...it's my birthday." He looked around over his shoulder to about seven small children - all about three and five years old - with dripping wet hair and clothes from the river playing a game of red-posies. "Whose children are they?"

  
"I have absolutely no idea." Jeon answered. "Not great conversationalists. Wonwoo was nice when he was a little kid; Bo Byuk was a little bit a mischief-maker. They're nice when they're that size; completely helpless, but nice." He and Joshua laughed.

  
"I didn't think I would end up here when I decided to have a bath." Joshua said. "Is it different for everyone? Did you turn up first off in what is a nice place for you, and then come here when I..." He trailed off. "Does Wonwoo know that girl?"

  
"That's Dido's daughter, Ji Young." Jeon explained. "Her Mother topped herself. Got brought up by Dido's parents."

  
"I've never seen her around the estate before." Joshua smiled as Wonwoo threw her into the river, and then jumped in after her.

  
"Dido's parents live in Australia, you see. As for the dying bit...I think that's the general consensus. Not been sure." Jeon regarded Joshua. "When people kill themselves without actually intending total death, they come to places like this. The dead part is your punishment for dying, but this stuff, the nice stuff, the dreamscape....tailored for you, specifically. Your coming-to when it's a self-manslaughter. What's your excuse?" Jeon asked Joshua, even though he already knew. Joshua didn't know that he knew though.

  
"How long have you got?" Joshua answered. 

  
"Funny." Jeon raised an eyebrow. "I hate jigsaws." He pointed over to where his Mother was doing one with a baby in her lap and Suri. "You spend all day and then there's just that one piece that doesn't fit. No matter where you try and put it, it just won't...go."

  
"Oh my God, Suri had a baby!" Joshua exclaimed. Jeon got up and followed him as Joshua went across the lawn over to the table.

  
"Hello, birthday boy." Suri smiled, and Joshua couldn't help going still as she kissed his cheek. "I left my present for you on the couch. Want to hold Jennie? She loves your cuddles." Joshua suddenly found himself holding an approximately three-month-old baby girl with a little white crepe dress with pink flowers embroidered on the hem.

  
"I don't think you try hard enough when you do jig-saws, Joshua." Joshua flushed at Jeon's euphuism, but his attention was quickly drawn back to the baby in his arms as she sneezed on his neck, and suddenly looked quite bewildered.

  
"Don't worry, only a sneeze." Suri chuckled, slipping index finger into her baby's hand as Joshua rocked Jennie side to side.

  
"Maybe that's just my limit." Joshua replied to Jeon. "A piece that doesn't fit. Never has. Never will. So what do you do? Best get rid of it." He smiled, chuckling, but he felt sick inside.

  
"Funny how children always find those discarded pieces and present them forth like a treasure." Grandmother commented, as Joshua gave Jennie back to Suri, who took her off for a feed.

  
"She's right. The entire thing is fucked is I understand the metaphor." Jeon quipped. "You've always been the piece they've been missing and now, of course, because you're here they'll never find it as you've decided to lose yourself down the back of the sofa for all eternity."

  
Joshua looked at him. "Wonwoo's right over there." He said, pointing to the river. Jeon began to walk through the party, and Joshua followed him, leaving Grandmother to her jig-saw. Jeon collected a fresh glass of wine for himself, and one for Joshua.

  
"Baby, you're asking too much from all of us. Nobody actually realises in the real world that no one else actually has the answers to all of this."

  
"That's depressing."

  
"That's the truth. We just fuck up." Jeon pointed over to Wonwoo. "He loves you. I'm going to come to love you. My wife loves you. It's simple."

  
"But why? I've fucked up Wonwoo, I've caused trouble for your wife, and I'm nothing to you." Joshua chuckled deresively, running one of his hands up his forearms.

  
"Don't be stupid. I watched you kiss my son for the first time. I heard the first time you said to Wonwoo, "I love you", and, by the way, I'm glad you like my Hotel." Jeon touched Joshua's face tentatively as the line of his mouth went straight and tight, and his eyes glowed sadly. "You're in my blood. You're the love of my blood." Joshua held Jeon's hand under his chin, both his hands curved around the larger, hairier hand tightly. "Do you really want this? Death? When there's a whole world just waiting for you?" Jeon gestured to the party. "This is the future, Joshua. This is...what everything will become."

  
Joshua shook his head slowly. "No, this isn't real."

  
"I don't think so. Fucking off is my fate, not yours. Now, piss off." 

  
Joshua laughed nervously, a hurricane whirling inside him. Jeon shook his head, grasping it firmly. Joshua was amazed at the heat that spread throughout him from Wonwoo's Father's touch. "Go on." Jeon coaxed. "Go."

\-----------------------------------

Joshua felt his throat dry, and coughed, unable to sit up. It felt like wires were over his body, stopping him from the movement. He couldn't quite open his eyes either; each one felt like a ten-ton weight.

  
"Joshua?" He heard Wonwoo's voice, and the mattress dip beside his ribs. "Oh." The sigh he gave was a half-mingled moan, completely happy and relieved. "Say something." He said. Joshua squeezed his hand back as Wonwoo entwined his own with his.

  
"You look so tall right now." Joshua squinted at Wonwoo's figure on the bed, making the younger man chuckle.


	24. New Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every dysfunctional family needs a dysfunctional family business. Wonwoo agrees with his Mother and A-Yeong to keep the Pentrose alive by washing the Dresden-money through the hotel, vineyards, and restaurant, Jeon finally conquers the power in death to hold in wife's hand again, A-Yeong re-connects with Li over memories of the Pentrose and Jihoon's future, Jihoon conquers his fear of Kwak Victoria where Kwak Elizabeth is concerned, and Chae-Seon gets surprised by the Mother-in-Law she has always revered as a "Old Dragon"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second final chapter to "Allergic To Water". It was really touching the right what is now the end; or will fully be next chapter. The scene I wrote when Jeon finally gets to hold his wife's hand...I hope it effects you, reader, in some way. beautiful things like that should

Joshua sat on the grass in the garden courtyard that led off from the dining hall. He had taken a photograph just before of a flower display Dido had created for the first day of Spring which made for just off a world record for the biggest violet blooms. He picked one of the violets and turned it over in his hands, admiring the colour of it. He had borrowed one of Wonwoo's jumpers, feeling the cold. It wasn't particularly cold that way, but since his skin had bled and nlistered so much due to his water allergic reaction three weeks ago, it was as though his system was more sensitive.

  
"You should speak to her, no matter what Victoria says. Elizabeth, I mean." Joshua said to Jihoon as the short man came and sat down beside him on the ground.

  
"That's sudden." Jihoon grinned. "I suppose you're right. I'll get around to do it when I don't feel so shit from nerves."

  
"Elizabeth seems like. Victoria's the older twin; they've had a lifetime of people mixing them up and staring at them. She's just protective. You know she realizes that you're deserving of Elizabeth, and vice versa. That's what really gets her."

  
"You've got a pretty good brain up there." Jihoon chuckled. He regarded Joshua. "You look the same, Joshua Hong." Jihoon said of the other man, even though his skin was still pink like a sunburn in places as he had nearly finished healing from the bath nearly a month ago; in the pink parts on his hand and neck, his veins looked translucent and deeply blue. "It's in your eyes. The eyes never change. Can I ask what happened with Mingyu?"

  
Before Joshua had a chance of reply, he grinned as he saw Jihoon's eyes light up hopefully at the sound of bright, loud, contagious female laughter; Kwak Victoria and Elizabeth's laughter. 

  
"He said to me about my eyes as well." Joshua hugged his knee, fist-bumping Jihoon. "Go grab her before Hitler -" Joshua's nickname for Victoria. "Gets in the way."

\-----------------------------------

As Chae-Seon walked through her house, searching for her car keys, she saw a suit-case in the hallway with the Jackson Wu jacket she knew to be her Mother-in-Law's draped over it. She frowned, walking into the kitchen to see the old lady sitting at the kitchen table, pure elegance in three layers of light grey fabric; a floating, floor-length jersey cardigan, a high-necked tunic dress, and a matching skirt beneath. Her Mother-in-Law - even back in the early days in the 70's and 80's - had always had a habit of making her feel inferior; even right now when she was wearing boot-leg jeans, heeled boots and a oat-meal coloured tunic dress. Grandmother nodded to her.

  
"Sit down, dear. Have some tea. I need to tell you some things."

  
Twenty minutes later, Chae-Seon picked up the suitcase in her arms and laid it down on the floor of the sitting room. She knelt down on the ground after helping Grandmother into her arm-chair. She wished the old dragon would use her walking-cane more if she felt weak. "So, you went to Germany all by yourself?" Chae-Seon said.

  
"Yes. I didn't want to worry you, dear." Grandmother said as Chae-Seon opened the lid of the suitcase and squawked in shock at the suitcase full of 500 Korean won notes.

  
"The equivalent to £7.65 million pounds. Oh, and some duty free." Grandmother sipped the lemon gin and tonic she had made before the suitcase came into question. "My clever son was diverting money from the business. All those tasting visits to France and Australia, nothing of the sort. He was taking cold, hard cash to a safe deposit box on Dresden." Grandmother's words filled with incredulous, happy laughter towards the end of her words.

  
"But...oh, A-Yeong's going to have a fit when I tell her." Chae-Seon whispered. Grandmother offered her some of the gin and tonic, which Chae-Seon sipped. She nearly gagged.

There wasn't a drop of tonic in there. "Wonwoo's never been onto to shock, thank God." She said, after she recovered from a burning throat and rejuvinated senses. 

  
"I think Jeon saw what was coming. This was his insurance policy." She regarded Chae-Seon tenderly as she plucked a single note from the suit-case and rubbed it in-between her fingertips.

  
"What would you have done if the Nazi's had caught you?" Chae-Seon grinned brightly, the shock making her hormones run wild as she pressed her hand to the old ladies face.

  
"Oh, the eldery have advantages. Invisibility been one of them. You understand that I'm giving this to Wonwoo but it's for all of us; all of my son's family and that Hotel?

\-------------------------------------------

Li sat beside A-Yeong in the Pentrose's kitchen, having a coffee with her. "I really fucked up, didn't I?" A-Yeong said, resting her face in one hand. For the last few weeks A-Yeong had been the "bad guy" in the marriage, over her conduct and treatment of that boy Joshua which was the foundations that caused his spell in the hospital.

  
"We've all fucked up." Li reasoned. "But not you as bad as the others. You tell the truth. About everything. About people...about me."

  
"I shouldn't have taken it so..." A-Yeong broke off, not having the words.

  
"Don't be so hard on yourself. Jeon practically turned it into an art form." Li chuckled. "You were just protecting our friends. It's a super-power." They both laughed.

  
"I'm trying to apologise." A-Yeong said.

  
"I know." Li nodded. "I'm accepting it. We've been married for over twenty-five years, Agro A-Yeong of Pentrose, Gyryeongsan."

  
A-Yeong smiled at her husband. "Our wedding was the Pentrose's first, remember?"

  
She laughed as Li commented, "Yeah, bit of a disappointment."

  
"Maybe Jihoon will get married here someday." She raised her eyebrows in a tease before fully laughing as Li groaned.

  
"I used to imagine Wonwoo getting married, sometimes. Jihoon his best man, all the village big-wigs turn up and Jeon gropes the bride." A-Yeong said. "Not going to happen now, is it?"

  
Li shook his head. "We've got our own son to hitched off. Let's worry about him." Li radiated a sense of good nature that A-Yeong realized she had missed.

  
"Do you think Chae-Seon might ever find someone else?" He thought aloud.

  
"Not for a long time. I think she still feels him." A-Yeong replied.

\---------------------------------------

Joshua gave the violet flower to Jihoon. "Put this behind her ear." He added.

  
"Thanks, _hyung_." Jihoon replied earnestly, just smiling.

\----------------------------------------

"We're in financial trouble. This is dirty money." Grandmother sat with Wonwoo, A-Yeong, and Chae-Seon as they spoke in the dining hall of the hotel. Chae-Seon had arranged for everyone to come up for something she said the Anglo-Saxon's called "Sunday Lunch". The food wasn't ready to be served for a long time yet. "It needs cleaning through a legitimate business. Like a Hotel." A-Yeong clasped her hands together, looking over at Wonwoo gently. "We can do this, all of us, together. Mum and Jihoon in the kitchen, Li and Dido and Dido's boys in the fields, produce gardens, and the vineyard. Me, you and Suri implementing everything. Is it really so crazy?"

  
"All the best ideas are." Chae-Seon said, regarding her son as well.

  
Slowly, Wonwoo began to laugh, and in that was his agreement; Grandmother smiled as suddenly A-Yeong and Chae-Seon began to cackle like hyenas, realizing that everything was falling into place.

  
"Every dysfunctional family need a dysfunctional family business." Jeon said. "But for that to work there has to be no place for old family secrets." He sat on the table edge beside his wife. "From the moment I first held Wonwoo in my arms, I loved him so much. I wanted to do everything for my little man. But she -" He looked down to Chae-Seon. "I don't know if it's how she was raised or her spirituality or her Shintoist background. Wonwoo I don't believe is really gay, and neither does he act it. But she always knew that I wouldn't be getting that hot daughter-in-law. Wonwoo's no-fuss attitude comes from his Mum. She was always a bit shrewd and quite, dependable, always respected. It's why her and A-Yeong go so well together; A-Yeong's a full-blown nutter and Chae-Seon always hits her with a frying pan." Jeon smiled tenderly.

  
"Chae-Seon will be alright. She's got my own Mum to keep her in her place." Jeon chuckled. Jeon reached down an entwined his hand with Chae-Seon's. His heart leapt up in her chest as she looked down, her fingers twitching. She clenched her palm, and Jeon exhaled heavily in wonder as he felt it, completely and utterly. The warmth and softness of her hands, how they smelled like her hand-cream and the soap in the kitchen she used after cutting raw met.

  
Jeon had always wished to be able to hold Chae-Seon's hand again, even after death.

  
Now...he could.


	25. All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joshua has a moment with Chae-Seon, Elizabeth and Jihoon connect for the first time in over a decade, and all settles into perfect place, with final words for "Allergic To Water" by Jeon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter of "Allergic To Water" presented forth. By the way, there's something I want to tell you; there's a second work - "Allergic To Water" is been adopted into a series. The next work is called "Before You Go"

Joshua looked up as Wonwoo's Mother sat beside him in the tea-rooms that the Jeon family used as a semi sitting-room when it wasn't used by the guests at the Pentrose.  
"I think he would have come to really love you." She said of her husband, shifting close to Joshua on the couch.

  
"I'd be more worried about what Jeon thought of Wonwoo. I think he's alright with it though." Joshua replied, glancing towards the ceiling. He wasn't sure he could tell Chae-Seon about seeing her husband in a dream-cum-death-cum-premonition he had had at the hospital as "Tears" by Ken Dodd - one of his vinyl records he collected - played on the machine he had brought down to the Hotel from his house by the river, which he hadn't been kicked out of. "He told me." Joshua said aloud, quieter. He thought that Chae-Seon might think it fiction, but she wouldn't take it too badly; Wonwoo had said she was still pretty Shintoist, despite the man she married.

  
Joshua turned to Chae-Seon fully as she gazed at him. "At the hospital. It was like a weird dream or something. I can't really say. It sounds...weird. But I know it was him."  
"I'm sorry that you've had to come into such a mess." She said, her head tipping to the side, leaning against the back of the couch. Chae-Seon stuck a arm up in the air, and put it around Joshua as he leant into her side. That was one of the first things Wonwoo had ever said to him about his Mother when Joshua had asked him what she was like. _"She's small, a bit found, like a brown bear. She's the relaxed, sort of spiritual Mum bear. She's big on cuddles. She thinks all men should hug their sons and daughters, no matter what age. If the arm goes up, you automatically vanish into her chest, no arguement about it. She's round as well; she gives the best hugs."_

  
Joshua thought to tell Wonwoo later just how warm his Mother was. She was like a walking oven. 

\------------------------------------------

"Lizzie?" Jihoon asked. The girl turned to him, dimples appearing in her cheeks as she smiled, the violet flower tucked behind her left ear. She had on cherry coloured lipstick and a fitted lemon and tree-leaf patterned Chinese qi pao dress with a ankle-length hem; Victoria had on tailored 1930's style English-man's trousers and leather heeled boots with black eye-makeup and long, effortless hair raining down her back in trendles and natural oomph. Elizabeth's hair was straightened, and combed into a centre part and tucked behind her ears, held in place with two gold hair-pins at the top of each cheekbone. Jihoon thought she was beautiful.

  
"Why do we stop holding close the ones we love?" Jeon said as he saw Victoria by herself, looking stony-faced, before seeing Jihoon and Elizabeth sitting together on the stone retaining wall of the garden on the north-east side of the Pentrose. "Is it because they grow up? Suddenly, they seem too far away. But that doesn't mean they don't need it. For that matter, so do you."

  
"Hungry?" Jihoon said to Elizabeth. "Chae-Seon's enormous Sunday lunch should be done by now."

  
"Thank God, Victoria's bloody starving." Elizabeth beamed. "It's why she's such a cranky bitch twenty-four-seven."

\-------------------------------------------

A-Yeong tasted a gravy that Chae-Seon had made freshly from the frying-pan juice of the steaks she was finishing off cooking in the oven, a black apron stained with flower and oil tied around Chae-Seon's waist. 

  
"The best guests always know exactly when to leave a party." Jeon continued, keeping an eye on Victoria, who he felt sorry for. To his knowledge, she had never had a boyfriend. Thought the absolutely image - though stronger - of her more delicate twin, no one had seemed to come near her the way the men flocked to Elizabeth. Jeon personally thought that if Jihoon had some more balls, he and Victoria would be two people who would need each other a lot. "Ok, there was a little mess to clean up, but on the whole, I think the timing of my death was immaculate." He chuckled as Chae-Seon and A-Yeong yelled like Mother Bears for all of the children to flock inside. Jeon came into the dining hall for a sticky-beak as numerous enormous bowls of food were put down on the table; kimchi, steaks, roasted vegetables in the English manner, American salads, steamed river fish from here at Gyryeongsan, cinnamon and apple baked oats and deconstructed rocky road for dessert.

  
"Yes, my death was the best thing that could have ever happened to this family." Jeon said. "Because life is like a recipe. Bitter and sweet all at the same time. And that's what makes it delicious."


End file.
